Entering Blogdom (with Fear and Trembling)

So now faith, hope and love abide.

The statement would almost fit a Hallmark card. It sounds so...nice. But the sentiments are much too weighty for a postage stamp. As Christians, we must "fight the fight of faith." We learn that hope is produced in us through suffering. And we are told that love, "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." This language should give us pause when we are tempted to think that faith, hope and love are easy or automatic weapons for believers. I've learned a lot about fighting--and about the glorious "abiding"--over the past few days.

I enter blogdom, both literally and figuratively, with fear and trembling. I named my blog The Fig Leaf, after the quotation from Kierkegaard that you can read in the header. I love the way that this quotation identifies the Word as the remedy for all of our nakedness and how it situates that remedy in community. The Word and the body--these have been all my comfort during the past few weeks.

This blog is one way that I can attempt at least three things:

1. To take every thought captive to obey Christ,
2. To rejoice in the sufferings that are producing endurance, character and hope in me,
3. To make a defense to anyone who asks the reason for the hope that I have.

But I do not take this role lightly and, as I try my hand a as blogger, I offer this prayer from Psalm 71: “But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more. My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge. With the mighty deeds of the Lord God I will come; I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.”

I invite you, as you read, to hold me accountable if I should begin to speak more of myself than I do of the Lord’s righteous works. The Lord’s purpose will stand, and my story matters only in that it is one of his numberless deeds of salvation.