Introduction

Writing has been an odd constant in my life. I wouldn't say I journal or write diaries. I don't write manuscripts or short stories or songs or novels. What I do is take meticulous notes.

"Notes? Really? That's not writing!!"

Normally, you would be right. Notes tend to be shorthand thoughts to be perused later in preparation for something greater. There is little thought or effort that goes into notes. But those aren't my notes. My notes are written in complete sentences. With punctuation. My notes have paragraph breaks. My notes have summary statements where summary statements should be, with introductions and conclusions. My notes aren't revisited and complied into a greater work. They often are my work. I don't know what goes on in my brain as I process information, whether its different or faster or slower than other people, but my thoughts come out naturally in grammatically correct, organized sentences, paragraphs and papers.

When I started talking about writing a blog, many of my friends said, "I'm surprised you don't have one already." I don't really know what kept me. I guess it was my dislike for following trends for the sake of being trendy. I didn't want to do it because everybody else was doing it. I wanted to do it for a reason. 

 I believe that reason has finally made itself clear.

"Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will giver her her vineyards and make the Valley of Trouble a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt." Hosea 2:14-15.

"When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys, I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive. I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together, that they may see and know, may consider and understand together, that the hand of the Lord has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it." Isaiah 41:17-20

I am a desperately thirsty person. I am constantly digging for myself new wells, building new cisterns, finding new sources, and God regularly pulls me into the wilderness where I have no hope of quenching any thirst and makes the desert spring with life and water like he shows in these verses, filling me in a way that I was never able to with my own efforts. That is what I want to chronicle, scriptures and theology that God has provided for me in the past, that are filling me now in the present, and that I will drink deeply of and be satisfied with in the future. I trust that you too are thirsty because you too are human. I pray that verses and truth here can help turn you to this fountain of living waters, to drink deeply and with joy from the well of salvation. And if nothing else, it will remind me that the only times in my life where I have ever had my thirst quenched is when I have drunk deeply of the water that he gives. So I hope you come with me and drink deeply of this water that God provides so faithfully here in our wilderness, the wilderness that God himself allures is into.