Tuesday, November 09, 2004
THE HIATUS
Two and a half months are a long time for a hiatus from this Journal. But to me it does not seem long.
The hiatus has been forced by time constraints – not because I had nothing about which to write. I have been inundated with circumstances too numerous to mention in a brief entry.
But two of these circumstances stand out in my mind when I reflect on why I haven’t been faithful to this Journal. And they seem worthy of mention here.
One circumstance is the 50-Day Spiritual Adventure which my church is completing this week. I wrote about this Adventure in my August 16th Blog. It was a great experience for the church. The weekly themes were great. The response by the congregation to the messages and to the Small Group meetings was terrific. We have had 5 small groups meeting 5 nights throughout the weeks of the Adventure.
But the preparation time on my time part has been horrendous. Just the sermon preparation for each of the 7 weeks was great. It required research, compilation of materials and sorting through all the material, then thinking through and selecting material to present on each subject and arranging the presentation in an orderly and comprehensible manner. It has all been time-consuming. The experience has been very enjoyable for me and the spiritual rewards for doing this have been great. But this intense preparation, along with the other aspects of ministry at Countryside and working full-time, has prevented many other things from occurring.
That leads me to the other time-consuming circumstance I want to mention: travel. During October I traveled over 4,000 miles for my Company. This travel has required several overnight stays. It has all been good but it has cut deeply into my time for other things. The result is there are many things that did not get accomplished. Writing in this Journal and getting very much rest are two of the many things left undone.
My travel will continue in November. I will be out over night some each week until the day before the United States Thanksgiving, November 25th. I have no guess as to how many miles I will add to the 4,000 with the November travels.
I have had a rental vehicle for all my travels and that has been good because it has saved wear and tear on my car and my Company has paid everything related to the travel.
But I am back. And I hope to be more faithful in my posts from now on.
Jim
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