Blogiversary, 2015

In June of 2006 I decided to take on the task of writing where someone besides myself could see it. They call it a "blog", short for "weblog". I set myself a goal of writing one a day. As of June 18, I've published 3,364 entries. Let's see ... let's do the math. June 20, 2006 to June 20, 2015 is 3,288 days. I have missed a day or two. I've made up for it. I think I've accomplished that goal.

That's one number. To me, some of the other numbers are mind-numbing. Since they started keeping track (because they didn't start until May of 2010) I've had nearly 400,000 page views. The leader in views is the Hard Sayings entry on "Sell all your possessions" because, of course, this is a bit difficult for any questioning Christian and a gold mine for any skeptic. "It says it. Why aren't you doing it?" There are nearly 17,000 hits on that page alone. Far behind at #2 with only 10,000 hits is "The History of the Choir" which I can only fancy is due to music students doing research because why in the world would anyone want to look up that topic? Third place is a mere 1100 or so on the puritans and whether or not they were puritanical. To me, those are huge numbers. In any given month I'll get more than 5,000 views. It's odd because for the last couple of months there hasn't hardly been a single article with more than 50 views on its own, so those 5,000 are looking at something ... I just don't know what. But you're looking, and that's amazing.

Another interesting number is the number 1. In all these years I have had to ban one and only one commenter. I've had a large variety of folks saying a large variety of things. Questions, agreement, praise, distaste, disagreement, outrage, the whole gamut of comments. But only one consistent violator of the rule and, happily, only one who isn't welcome here anymore. I know, I know, there are those who will suggest I only allow supporters to comment. But the facts don't bear that out.

Perhaps most interesting to me is the numbers of emails I get on the side. No, not large numbers. No, not big names. It's that occasional "out of the blue" email that says, "I just read your article on ____ and I just wanted to thank you. It blessed me." Those are the ones. The ones that say, "It blessed me" or "It made me think" or "I had never seen that before." The ones who were nudged by God through my little efforts here. Truthfully, I don't know very many of them at all. They aren't friends I've known or family members or the like. They're strangers cruising the Internet with a search engine looking for ... I don't know, "the history of the choir" or "submit" or "ego te absolvo" and come across something I wrote, and God uses it, rough tool as it is, without me even knowing it.

I've considered from time to time ending this. But it's that last piece of information that prevents me. I don't know. I don't know who is reading it, what the effect is, or how God will use it. So I start into my 10th year with less than 50 people per day reading my daily entries but far more reading stuff I don't know they're reading. Maybe, just maybe, I got something right and maybe, just maybe, God can use it for their benefit and His glory. So, tomorrow is Day One of the Year 10 of this and I'll see how He leads me from there.

To you readers, thanks. I appreciate your time. I hope you're blessed or challenged or both.