This post’s title may remind you of a religious television program, but it actually reflects entry into what I view as the Committed Bloggers Club with this, my 700th post on Ascribelog. That is indeed a cause for celebration!

My advent into the blogosphere began on June 20, 2005, so I’ve averaged about 100 posts annually during my seven blogging years. If you’d like to read my thoughts on beginning to blog, you can find my first post here. You can read why I chose the name “Ascribelog” in this early post. In those days, I was over at Blogspot, but due to frustrating formatting problems I moved here to WordPress in April of 2011.

If you go back to read any entry prior to April 4, 2011, you may notice what appears to be a “greater than” symbol before each of those titles. (I believe you algebraic geeks might call it or the “lesser than” sign a “strict inequality” symbol.) That symbol is how WordPress differentiates between the entries that originally appeared on Blogspot and the ones I wrote since switching, which really was quite painless and something I’ve never regretted.

Seven hundred posts represent quite a bit of blogging water under the writing bridge, especially since I’ve regularly been writing thousands of words each month for Christian Renewal and many articles each year for Mid-America Reformed Seminary’s newsletter, the Messenger. Those seven years also contained multiple personal writing projects, including eight novels (still in various stages from rough drafts to final revisions), some huge editing projects and several major nonfiction works.

Editing projects included assisting Dr. Cornelis P. Venema, President of Mid-America Reformed Seminary with some books, including his The Gospel of Free Acceptance in Christ and his much shorter work, Getting the Gospel Right. The editing project that particularly stands out in my mind is abridging Dr. Venema’s 488-page (not counting appendices) The Promise of the Future into his 224-page Christ and the Future. Somewhat abashedly, I especially recall my rash response when he inquired about my interest in tackling the project: “Piece of cake.”

Another huge project was helping edit the “Life in Christ” catechism curriculum, for which I also wrote the first volume, Not My Own: Discovering God’s Comfort in the Heidelberg Catechism.

My nonfiction book, Little One Lost: Living with Early Infant Loss, was published in June of this year and my A Month of Sundays: 31 Meditations on Resting in God is scheduled for release in November.

Little One Lost is available online by ordering directly from the publisher, Reformed Fellowship, or from Amazon.

I just discovered that A Month of Sundays is online! It’s listed on this page of the Reformation Heritage Books website at a pre-release price of only $7.50. Check it out!

Well, that was an amazing distraction. But back to the main discussion about blogging and this being my 700th post.

Keeping up with a blog requires a lot of time. Just ask someone like Tim Challies or Kevin DeYoung, both of whom are pastors and authors who have posted a lot more than 700 entries. On his blog, Tim Challies gives great book reviews and gives away great stuff. At the creatively titled “DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed,” Kevin DeYoung writes interesting posts, including yesterday’s thoughts on “Blogging for a Sustainable Future.”

As a busy pastor who’s blogged over a thousand posts in less than four years, DeYoung is initiating some minor changes that he hopes will free him from blogging’s continual tyranny. I can identify with much of what he writes about blogging’s time drain and I commend him for his wise decisions.

I made similar decisions about a year ago when I felt this blog devouring time I couldn’t spare. Since I do so many different kinds of writing, I created categories for each weekday. This helped me organize my thoughts and my time. I also felt I might as well get some blogging mileage out of the thousands of words I write each month for Christian Renewal, so I began posting those articles (usually after the magazine has been printed), which gave me some deeply appreciated breathing space.

Please join me in thanking God for the ways he’s blessed my writing career and for enabling me to reach the milestone of 700 blog posts!

Photos accompanying this post were taken when I was experimenting with my new Nikon Coolpix L810’s settings on the 4th of July. All photos are the property of Glenda Mathes and may not be copied without permission.