Has it really been four years?

If you are reading this post because it just popped up in your RSS reader, that’s wonderful but you may want to go through your reader and remove the old links. Just sayin’. Allow me to re-introduce myself. My name is Doug McHone and this is my blog. This blog has taken me from my home in central Iowa to conferences as close as Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Minneapolis and as far as Los Angeles. I was never as happy in my life as I was when I was reading and meditating about biblical matters and blogging my thoughts.

I used to think that my blogging time was fairly recent until I reactivated this website and pondered bringing in my archives from before. I was shocked to see that my last post was in 2008. 2008! Are you serious? Where did the time go? Because of this, I have decided to rethink my approach fully.

“Choose your ruts carefully, you will be in them for the next 200 miles.” -Some supposed road sign in Alaska

I am currently in the process rebooting my life. There are things that have taken place in my life during this four year void that will not be discussed in this public blog. That is a huge change from my transparency stance in the past. I remain transparent to the man at church who is directly discipling me and to the eldership in the church. To reflect my rebooting of life, I’m also rebooting the blog. Fresh start. That is, I am not bringing a full archive of my past back.

But what about that one post covering a certain topic that was so good? I will periodically bring in certain posts from before into this blog. If you have a favorite, I can look for it and bring it in. But let’s face it. I had more whiffs than hits back in the day.

Also, I will not even try to adhere to the schedule of blogging I once had. I was a daily blogger once upon a time. Often more than once a day. No more. I can’t keep the edifying content going like that the way Tim Challies can.

So I’ve discussed my reboot at a slower pace than before. Now everyone tells me I need to have a focus in what the blog is about. A lack of focus seemed to work pretty well for me back in the day though, right? OK, you’re out of practice recognizing my sense of humor. I do have a focus, but I reserve the right to post outside of that focus for any reason. Such as a description of how good my prize-winning smoked chicken tastes.

The focus of this blog is as follows:

Mark 12:28-31

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?”  Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

In my life reboot, I see a lot of areas in my life where I have failed to love the Lord in those ways. I want to love Him with my whole heart, I want to love Him with my entire soul and I want to love Him with my mind. Finally I want to love Him with my strength. This vertical focus of loving God should manifest itself also in a horizontal way as I relate to people in the ways that God would want me to.

So tell your friends that I’m back, but don’t expect a high frequency of blog posts. I plan on covering topics raised in Church, my life group, my discipling lessons and in my own reading and pondering. If you want to get in touch with me outside this blog, the best place to do so is on Google+. I also have a twitter and a facebook account, but those are willfully neglected for the most part. Give Google+ an honest try! And do let me know if you post an awesome picture of your breakfast on facebook so I can log in and check it out.