There’s a scene in the Schwarzenegger version of Total Recall where the hero is wearing a mechanical disguise to sneak through customs to go to Mars. He (dressed as she) is only programmed to answer a limited number of potential questions from the custom agents. When one of the agents goes off the prepared script, the mechanical head malfunctions and our hero can only reply with an increasingly desperate and garbled “Two weeks” – the answer to the question “How long will you be staying?” It’s actually a running bit in our house (“How long are you going to be in the bathroom?” … “Twooo weeeksh.”) but today it’s a little more significant.

In exactly two weeks we will have reached the completion of the original purpose of this blog, which was to offer a daily devotional reflection on the scripture selections from the Daily Lectionary from the Book of Common Worship. The Lectionary takes us through most of the Bible in a two-year cycle. The first day of Advent (Sunday, December 3 this year) starts the cycle over.

A while back when the blog hit 500 days, I speculated about what comes next. As Advent rapidly approaches and my brain keeps shouting “two weeks” because it hasn’t had answers about what will happen once I finally make it to Mars, I think I have a plan.

• Branching Out. There are things on my mind other than devotional themes, and I’d like to share and discuss them. Not sure how often these would come up, but I’m thinking at least once a week. Definitely more personal and hopefully creative in scope, but I’m not interested in doing a glimpse-into-my-life / confessional sort of blog. More an exploration of topics. Still inclusive in nature – I’m also not interested in posting or hosting rants.
• A Commitment to Invitation. The Sunday Invitations have been more infrequent than I would have liked. Without the pressure of writing something new every day, I feel I can commit to doing one each Sunday for at least the next year.
• Rinse and Repeat. I like posting the daily readings. I’m not sure I could come up with another 700+ new ones and be satisfied with them. So I’m going to do daily reposts. They’ll be new to many readers, and if you’ve read them before it was a couple years ago so I’ll say what I say about re-reading scripture: you’re in a different place every time you read it, so it may have something different to say to you. Maybe these pieces will too. And I’ll get another chance to edit and polish them. And replace stock photos with my own work. It’s also possible experience will lead me to disagree with myself, and won’t that be interesting to handle?

Thanks for taking the time to read and visit. I look forward to sharing the next phase of Comfort and Challenge with anyone who’d like to come along for the ride!

Peace!

Joe