(Not So) New Beginnings

It’s a holiday Monday here in most parts of Canada (“Heritage Day,” in Alberta), so I’m enjoying one last leisurely morning of getting up whenever the urge strikes, nursing a pot of coffee for half the morning, and reading/writing while the rest of the family sleeps late.  Tomorrow morning, it’s a new start as I’m officially back to work.  Unsurprisingly, I’m thinking of “newness” today—new church, new people, new rhythms of life and worship, new expectations, new challenges, and the list goes on.  “New” is often a combination of exciting and terrifying for me, and I suppose that’s kind of how I’m feeling today.

You may also have noticed some “newness” in the look of this blog if you’ve visited recently.  I’ve been looking to change things up for a while now, and this week seemed like as good an opportunity as any, if for no other reasons than the largely symbolic ones tied to my own new beginning.   I tried to clean things up a bit, to make the blog a bit more compact and attractive, but at the end of the day these things are largely subjective, I know.  At any rate,  I hope that you will still find it relatively simple to find your way around, and that you will continue to feel free to contribute to conversations here.  I’ve said this many times before, but I truly do value the quality and diversity of the voices that drop by here from time to time.

The writer of Ecclesiastes famously said that “there is nothing new under the sun.”  It’s a good reminder that however new things might happen to feel—big things or small things—I am participating in ventures and realities that long preceded my arrival.  A new position, a new church, yes, but the same task of helping others to worship and follow the God revealed most clearly in Jesus Christ.  A new look on a little blog, yes, but the same age-old reality of human beings in conversation with one another about (hopefully) interesting and important things that matter to them.  What’s new is old—perhaps it’s particularly important for those with any kind of public voice to recognize this from time to time.

And now, I’m off into the last of these liminal days I have been enjoying for the past month.