As I had planned, my new website production has slowed down since the spring and summer of 2009. I really hadn’t planned on launching a new website any time soon and was going to focus more on my devotions. But the best laid plans get distracted when I’m behind them. First of all, I’m finally caught up on my devotions and have everything posted for January. This is the first time since Thanksgiving that I’ve been caught up I think. I’m actually launching a couple of new web projects but there’s no telling when I will make them live. My best guess is that it will take a couple of weeks at least. There is one new address to offer, but it’s not a new site. I registered the name www.theonlinebibledictionary.com for the Bible dictionary. The dictionary has been around for some time and even my new, updated site has been up since the fall. However this domain will take anyone directly to the dictionary instead of having to navigate around the spreadinglight site. In all, not a big deal but I thought it was worth the investment. My current website project is something that has come out of a sermon series. I’ve been preaching from the gospel of John and have been using the details in the other gospels to fill in the holes of some of the stories. I suddenly had an idea – wouldn’t it be nice to have every story put together in order to read all of the gospel accounts of the story in one place? So that is my project. There are 233 separate stories recorded in the four gospels. I am not only posting all of the relevant verses to each story but will be adding some commentary about why the story is significant and how the gospel accounts differ. In other words, 233 webpages written by me. It will definitely take a while to get the site finished but I’ll be sure to add the link here when I’m done. I already have plans for another future project. I purchased the domain name for it already so there’s a good chance that I’ll get it done as well. It will be my attempt to consolidate the business/affiliate side of Spreading Light Ministries. Ultimately there are some Christian business sites that I’d like to launch but I don’t want to clutter up the ministry site with links so this will be a new launching platform. Once again, this will be a long term project but I will likely put up a smaller scale site to get things started.
Month: January 2010
God’s Newness
In a new year I like to focus on God’s newness. The old has passed, the new has come. January first marks a time to put the old behind us. No matter how bad the previous year was, we can say that it was last year and we are in a new year with endless possibilities.
It’s for this reason that I am focusing January’s devotions on newness and things that God declares to make new in the Bible. Despite my liking of newness, I was very surprised at something new today.
I live on the east coast and got two feet of snow a week before Christmas. Currently the temperature has been dropping into the teens and single digits overnight and the high hasn’t made it out of the 20’s in several days.
All of this left me absolutely shocked to look out my office window in my basement and see four irises popping up out of the ground by about an inch. Even in the middle of winter (actually only two weeks into it!) I’m reminded that spring is coming. Soon blossoms will be out in full force and all of the oldness will be replaced by something new and beautiful.
Of course all of this serves as a reminder of how God makes us new as well. He takes something that it is cold and dead and not that pretty and makes something wonderful out of it. Praise God for His newness!