Wish I had GPS!

I’m a theology geek before I’m a political geek, but I do love both topics. My good friend Justin Fontes has been informally posting a series of questions on Facebook that are designed to examine the intersections of faith and culture. As one would expect, his questions in that digital public-forum result in a variety of passionate responses from diverse viewpoints.

Justin recently posed the question mentioned in the title of this post, “Is ‘Separation of Church and State’ Biblical?”. Here’s the response I came up with:

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http://lessof.lenflack.com

It seems like right around January 1st each year, I roll out some newfangled change to this site in anticipation of a stellar year of blogging. And then, a month goes by without any posts before I ashamedly post one or two thoughts before disappearing again. Last year was particularly disappointing for me in regards to blogging frequency. I had presumed that being in full-time ministry would make it easier for me to find time to blog. Ha! Yeah, right. Nevertheless, I’m rolling out two newfangled changes this year!

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2009 by Colorcubic.com

I really enjoy the celebration of the New Year’s holiday. Now, I’m not referring just to the traditional aspects that involve socializing with others until midnight; those gatherings can be fun, and I certainly do enjoy ringing in the new year with good friends. Rather, my favorite part of the celebration is actually the opportunity that it creates to conduct an introspective examination of our life and conduct. It’s true that we can (and truthfully should) do these evaluations throughout the year as well, but the new year creates a uniquely natural break in the normal rhythm of life. This break, often paired with a day or two (or more!) of rest from one’s work is a perfect opportunity to both look back, and plan ahead.

When I wrote my year-end post last year, I had no idea what to expect for the year to come. As I look back at 2009, I’m struck with the realization that it was a time of both blessing and struggle for myself and my family. However, I can honestly say that I felt Christ was present and active through all of it.

Rather than focusing on the struggles, I’d like to take just a moment to share some of the things that were blessings to me this year.

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In preparation for my return to the blogosphere (yes, I say that every December/January and July/August), I’ve been doing some under-the-hood things to the site. This post is about the most recent geek-change.

In the world of URL shorteners, it seems bit.ly has the edge for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, I prefer the j.mp service (which is actually powered by bit.ly, but obviously has a shorter domain name). I’ve been using Alex King’s Twitter Tools to announce new posts on Twitter for a while now. As of version 2.0, Twitter Tools includes a plugin of it’s own to shorten URLs with bit.ly. This is better than nothing, but not exactly what I want.

Since the technology of bit.ly and j.mp is essentially identical, I think that a bit of find-and-replace PHP hacking will allow me to post using j.mp. I’ve made those changes, uploaded the file, and activated my plugin. Essentially, this is the test post. We’ll see if it works!

Edit: About 20 seconds after posting this entry, the following tweet appeared on Twitter:

@lenflack New post: Custom j.mp Plugin for Twitter Tools http://j.mp/7hRziR #fb

Success!

This is actually just a test post, posted using BlogPress from my iPhone. I may very well delete it.

However, I thought it may be nice to share a cute picture of my daughter, Moriah, playing with her friend, Natalie. (Moriah is the little one.)

I hope the post works well, and that the graphics match the style of the site. It would be nice to post from my iPhone… It may mean more regular posts.