Dateline Sunday, 8 January 2023

Today began with the temperature 10 or 15 degrees below yesterday’s low. The caused a thick fog to be about, so thick that I didn’t feel like driving to church on the high-speed interstate that is the quickest route. So I went through town on the slower roads. The closer I got to the church, the thicker the fog. Yet, going slowly and having a well-marked road, as well as enough traffic to see the road ahead of me clearly.

Thus, the drive to church was easy. I had to be there a bit early due to a schedule change in the new year and a desire that all the adult Sunday school teachers be in the lobby at certain times today. I had to take my computer upstairs first, set it up, and log into the Zoom account we are using for those who can’t come to class. Except I couldn’t log in and had to hunt someone down to get the 6-digit code to log in. Eventually I logged in, we held the class, and the new lesson series for the new year started well.

Church was good, except for the announcement that our minister of music is leaving for another church. So at present we are without a pastor, soon to be without a music minister, and have a temporary, parttime youth minister. But we will carry on. Spirts are good, workers available, and the cause will continue.

Upon exiting church, I saw that the fog had lifted. Bright sunshine and still cool temperatures were invigorating.

This afternoon, after a small lunch, I went to the sunroom to read. I got some read in a writers magazine and in an essay related to some Bible study lessons I’m writing, got them done, and fell asleep. I was in a bit of a sleep deficit due to my wife’s heart episode last night (no details required) and getting up early to study my lesson. After that. Lynda and I went for a two-mile walk, then it was reading and supper.

We watched some TV, including Midsummer Murders and All Creatures Great and Small. To multi-task while watching, I worked on the Bible study series I want to write at least part of this year. It’s a multi-volume series. In February we’ll start with Part 5 of the six-year Lenten/Easter series. One volume is about 95% done, and another somewhere around 40%. But, as I’ve worked on writing the book form of Parts 3 and 4, I’ve come to see that the way the series was broken up to teach didn’t make sense in book form. So I played around with it and felt a lot of fog—lack of a clear path on how to structure the split of the books.

I finally settled on dividing the series into eight separate books. What we taught the first year really needs to be two book volumes, and what we taught the third year needs to be two volumes. That, I think, would make it easier for people to use for a series of Bible studies.

However, it’s still a little foggy to me, this lesson series, and so I have to call that a tentative decision. I’ll have to perhaps work with it a little more. Maybe it could be seven volumes, not eight. I have some work to do on that.

But at least I made a little progress. The eight volumes will work (and, I should say, these are not meant to be big books: maybe 35,000 to 40,000 words each). Perhaps by morning the fog will have lifted and I’ll have better clarity on the issue. I hope so.