Back when I started Sign of the Rose in 2012, I never imagined that I would still be going thirteen years later or that I would reach 1,000 posts. At that point in my life I was serving as an associate pastor, preaching roughly once a month. I had intentionally sought out a position as an associate pastor because I needed some space to rediscover and reinvent myself after a challenging couple of years, but I also needed a space to write and explore. I am thankful for the people who have read and engaged with the varied posts over the past thirteen years, but ultimately this was an exercise for myself. I needed to find a way to utilize my intellectual curiosity, the desire to challenge myself academically, and to wrestle with ideas and to remain accountable. Some people take pictures of their food to keep accountable on a diet or post numbers from a workout, I guess I take my work and put it out into the void that is the internet. In many ways this space became like the Pensieve from the Harry Potter books where I took things I reflected on and frequently go back to remind myself what I have learned or discovered.

I originally intended to use this post as a retrospective look back at the events that led to the creation of this blog and then my lessons learned through the process of writing over the past thirteen years. Ultimately, this began to grow into a large project and may share the beginnings of this reflection in the near future, but for the moment I need to celebrate the milestone and continue to share some of the other things I’m working on. I do have a couple writing projects (fiction) that I’ve been working on slowly and I’m not sure if they will ever make it beyond my computer at home. I will continue to work through the bible; 2 Kings is next after making it to Psalm 120.[1]

Ultimately this post is like a road marker. I felt the need to mark the passage of this place in my writing which has covered a significant amount of distance. If you pass this place in the road, thank you for sharing a little bit of this writing journey.

[1] I have done ten psalms between each other book of the bible I’ve written on as a transition. Currently I’ve completed Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, 1 Kings, Esther, Psalms 1-120, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Joel, Haggai, the Gospel of Matthew, and Revelation.