Hiatus – A pause or gap in a sequence, series, or process.

Year – The time taken by the earth to make one revolution around the sun.

It feels like it was just yesterday when I had grand aspirations for this blog. I was going to post roughly two times per month. I was going to write, as I saw it, the connection between Christ and culture. I was going to stick with it and develop my writing chops slaving away at a keyboard or something like that.

But here I am, two years later. I wrote above that it feels like yesterday, but these last two years…

these last two years…

You know when people describe periods of time as if they ‘lasted ages.’ They describe it as time ‘having slowed down.’ They describe it as ‘painful and fraught with worry and panic.’ The last two years, in my life and many of my friends lives, could be described in this very same manner.

You may be looking up at the definitions above and wondering why I defined both of those words. Defining hiatus makes sense. It’s not a word that we use all that often..but year? Why did I define year? It’s because if you were to ask me what these last two years have been like, since my last post, I would have to double check to make sure it hasn’t been four or five or ten years (ok, ten might be an exaggeration, but you understand my point). Two years have passed and with it I have experienced or witnessed the following: a church split, my son’s hospital visit, personal mistrust of character, destruction of another church, backbiting, bitterness, anger, frustration, a miscarriage, more mistrust of character, a pandemic, political polarization, racial injustice and on and on the list goes. Who would imagine two revolutions around the sun could contain all of this?

Before I start throwing a pity party for myself, I want to reassure people that good things have happened, dispersed in among the bad. I’ve celebrated two anniversaries to my lovely wife, this year making our sixth. My son is healthy and will turn three later this year. I watched one of my best friends get married. God continues to be faithful to me and my family in spite of my severe shortcomings. Friendships have grown and new friendships have blossomed.

This leads to that first word up there, hiatus. While there has been a hiatus from writing these past two years, there is never really been a hiatus in seeing culture intersect with Christ. No pause button has been pushed on my life which has allowed me to simply stay where I was two years ago. Wisdom has been gained through experiences (I hope). God has revealed His immense and wonderful grace through each of these circumstances, good and bad. He has been Faithful and Present in each of these things, just as He will continue to be Present and Faithful because that is Who He is.

So the two-year writing hiatus is over, but the hiatus of observing and trying to makes sense of what God is actively doing, has never actually, really ever happened.