Tag Blogging

A Blogger’s Wish List

Todd R 8 Comments

I’ve been writing this blog for over 5 years, and it’s been a great experience.  As a reason for me to more fully consider thoughts I have about God, it’s been a good exercise.  Instead of making a quick note about a verse or idea, having this blog provides an outlet for thinking those things through.  As a way to share with others what I learn about God, it’s also been successful, as the number of readers continues to grow.  (Thank you to all of my readers!). However, there are a few things I wish were a lot better, and here are three examples.

I wish I could interact more with other bloggers
Between job and family responsibilities, I have very, very little time to read other blogs, much less to comment on them or engage with other bloggers.  I subscribe to a bunch of blogs but on a typical day I can only read 1-2 of these (if any).  Retirement is a long way off, but my hope is that I’m still doing this when that happens and that I’ll devote a lot more time to reading and engaging with a lot more Christian blogs.  If I’m not reading and commenting on your blog, I wish I could.

I wish I could finish at least one series I’ve started
I’m much more ambitious when it comes to wanting to write a long blog series than I’m able to finish.  In fact, I haven’t finished a single series I’ve started.  Since I want to post often, it’s a lot easier to write about what’s currently on my mind than to continue a series I’ve started.  So, a wish I have is to complete a long series of posts on one topic.  I’ve started a series on the beatitudes, the songs of ascent, Ebenezers (or instances of “but God…” in the Bible) and others, but haven’t completed any of them.  Maybe I’m supposed to focus on one-shot posts, but I’d like to be able to finish what I start!

I wish I could live up to my blog’s expectations
This will never happen in full until we reach eternity, but my last wish is that I can live up to the life I recommend and encourage on this blog.  I write a lot of “today, do this” type of posts but personally don’t often follow through.  I make a lot of statements about how to better represent Jesus in this world, but in reality, I routinely fail to live that kind of life.  Should this stop me from writing the way I do?  It shouldn’t, but I’m not unaware of the teaching of James 3:1, which says: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”  Everything I write on this blog (and do in life) will be judged by God, not to determine my salvation, but to reveal whether I have lived this life as one called to holiness by Christ.  Not an easy task, and this is why Paul tells us to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”[1]  This life is not ours to do with as we please, but fortunately we have a God of mercy who saves us and completes the work he began in us[2].

Fellow blog readers and writers, perfection and Christlikeness are not attainable in this world, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be our objective.

May our blogging wishes come true!

[1] Philippians 2:12b
[2] Philippians 1:6

Happy 5th Blogiversary to Driving Toward Morning!

Todd R 6 Comments

Fellow travelers,

Has it really been 5 years?  May 20, 2021, is the date of the first post, so yes.  Happy Blogiversary to me!

A big thank you to everyone who has been reading along, and especially to those who comment and share!  I don’t know what happened, but somehow after 3 years of hardly any growth, my number of daily readers (according to WordPress’ standard reports) doubled in 2025 and is on pace to almost double again in 2026.  The chart below shows the total visitors (the dark bar) and the total views (the lighter bar) for every calendar year from 2021 to so far this year.  2026 is already the 2nd-most popular year.

Views and popularity aren’t a goal here, but it’s certainly not a negative!  I am very thankful that the things I write about (which are very meaningful to me) are resonating with other people.  When writing, I “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,”[1] and my hope is to take ideas that are impactful to me and make them impactful to others by sharing them.

A lot has changed in 5 years.  In that time and looking back at prior Blogiversary posts, I’ve learned it’s best not to set goals other than my informal one to try and post something every day.  Using my library of old posts, that really should be attainable, but sometimes life gets in the way, and sometimes I’m just not up to it.  I don’t like continuing to post old stuff if I haven’t written anything new in a while.

But when I think of the growth of viewership, I’m mindful of this story about Charles Spurgeon told by Warren Wiersbe:

“A young preacher once complained to Charles Spurgeon, the famous British preacher of the 1800s, that he did not have as big a church as he deserved.
“How many do you preach to?” Spurgeon asked.
“Oh, about a hundred,” the man replied.
Solemnly Spurgeon said, “That will be enough to give account for on the day of judgment.””

As James wrote, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”[2]  Only God knows where this blog will go, but above all, I hope to follow where He leads faithfully.

We are not home yet, so let us all keep “driving toward the morning sun.”

[1] Hebrews 10:24
[2] James 4:15

Driving Toward Morning’s 2025 in Books

Todd R 3 Comments

Dear fellow travelers,

It’s become a tradition here to post what books I read during the year.  This year’s total was 23, relatively high for me, but I read a lot of short books.  Last year I noted that I read less books (16) because of my struggle to get through the over 900 pages of The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim (1883).  I still haven’t finished it even though I started in late 2023 and didn’t really try in 2025.  Maybe in 2026 I can “close the book” on that one.

So, what books did I finish reading this year?

Fiction books (in order read):

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

I’ve read all of these before except Pride and Prejudice and A Christmas Carol.  The first is one of my wife’s favorites and I finally read it and did enjoy it.  The key is to know Austen is making fun of her characters.  The second is a story we all know, but reading it fills in a lot of spaces.  I was surprised at how funny it was.

Just like Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, I re-read Lewis’s Narnia books every few years and they are as good as ever.  I’m in the middle of The Silver Chair now, and am alternating between these and other, “harder” books.  It helps me stay motivated to read.

A few history books:

A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks by David Gibbins
Pax by Tom Holland
Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides
Wedding of the Waters by Peter Bernstein

Wedding of the Waters, a history of the building of the Erie Canal, is the only one of these I’d read before.  Pax, a history of part of the Roman Empire, was very well written and interesting, but I expected it to cover the time period of the New Testament.  It didn’t, but Dominion by the same author (which I got for Christmas) will probably cover that ground and more.

Plus several religious books:

In addition to regular Bible and study Bible reading, in 2025 I read:

The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser
Making Me, and Like the Stars by Glenn Parkinson
Several books by Warren Wiersbe: Be Loyal (Matthew), Be Free (Galatians), Be Rich (Ephesians), Be Dynamic (Acts 1-12), Be Daring (Acts 13-28), Be Faithful (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon), Be Victorious (Revelation).

I picked up Wiersbe’s entire “Be” series in 2021 as part of a digital subscription and am working through it over time.  A long time.  I like his overall approach, and the books are a great source of thoughtful stories and quotes.  I’ve covered 32 of the Bible’s 66 books so far!

Have you read any of these?  What books did you enjoy in 2025? And speaking of reading, I want to thank all of you who take the time to read this blog.  In 2025 I nearly doubled my views from 2025 (the previous high)!  I don’t know what happened, but October through December of 2025 were very busy here.

What are We Willing to Leave on the Cutting Room Floor?

Todd R Leave a comment

From earliest times, debate has raged over whether God’s word can be taken literally.  Since the serpent asked, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”[1] people have debated if the world was created in 6 days.  If Moses really parted the Red Sea.  If Jonah really spent 3 days inside a great fish.  And so on.  Talk about whether the Bible means what it says often focuses on the miraculous events within.

But what about verses like Ephesians 4:29?  “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”  When Paul wrote that, did he literally mean “no corrupting talk,” or just to aim for less crude language than the average person?  Did Paul mean each word needs to “fit the occasion,” or to repeat whatever catchphrase seems to work in most situations?  Did Paul mean everything we say should “give grace” to others, or is it ok if sometimes we want to look good or only appear gracious?  Do we need to always build up those who hear us?  Did Paul “actually say” what he wrote in Ephesians 4:29?

Failure to meet our ideals
does not mean that
we should change them.

We might reply that this is an impossible standard, but Jesus in Luke 18:19 said “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”  In that one statement, Jesus testifies that no one is good (everyone misses the mark), and also that He is God in the flesh, come to save us from failing to meet the standard.

So yes, Ephesians 4:29 should be taken literally, but we should also take literally that only Jesus can meet the standard, and that He did meet the standard.  Failure to meet our ideals does not mean they are the wrong ideals and that we should change them.  Holiness is holiness.

G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book Orthodoxy that “it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails to imitate its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitful. But it does frightfully matter how often humanity changes its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitless.”[2]

Photo by John Moeses Bauan on Unsplash

In film editing, “the cutting room floor” refers to pieces of physical film that (in pre-digital times) were cut out of the movie and left lying on the floor.  When writing this blog, one of the hardest things to do is to cut out parts or phrases I care deeply about, but sometimes it’s necessary, because my words aren’t always Ephesians 4:29 words.  Finding these failures can be fruitful if I learn from them and move closer to the ideal.  In real-time, daily conversation it’s even harder, but to take Ephesians 4:29 literally, we all have to figuratively ask:

What are we willing to leave on the cutting room floor today?

[1] Genesis 3:1
[2] Chesterton, G.K. Orthodoxy (1908).  P. 163.

Themes from Driving Toward Morning 2025

Todd R 6 Comments

Dear fellow sojourners,

Now that we’re into December 2025 is almost over and on come the “year in review” sort of posts.  Curious about how to summarize what I wrote in 2025 I loaded my 2025 Word doc into ChatGPT and asked for a 5-bullet-point summary of themes.  I promise I would never write a “normal” post using Generative AI, and I definitely would never use it without letting my readers know.  However, I am curious about the technology and find it has some helpful uses, like summarization.  So, here’s how ChatGPT summarized the blog for 2025:

“Deepening Faith Through Struggle and Growth
Many posts emphasize how God matures believers through trials, weak moments, and long seasons of slow spiritual growth (like the mustard seed and “blade–ear–full grain” parables). Even tiny faith is destined to grow by God’s power, not ours.

Living as Servants of God in Everyday Life
A central idea is that everyone serves something, and Christians are called to consciously serve Christ in ordinary tasks, not only in formal ministry. Daily life—work, family, routine chores—can fully please God.

Obedience, Trust, and the Danger of Self-Reliance
Several posts warn against the “however” we raise against God’s commands, the pride of Babel, or Pharaoh-like hardness. The call is to trust God’s ways over our own reasoning and resist drifting off the path.

Radical Grace, Forgiveness, and Loving Others Well
From Philip welcoming the former persecutor Paul, to teaching on forgiveness and serving the poor, the posts highlight God’s enormous grace and the call for believers to extend that same radical, healing forgiveness to others.

Eternal Perspective: Investing in What Lasts
The posts frequently encourage readers to prioritize heaven over earthly success—storing treasure in heaven, remembering God’s justice, recognizing the temporary nature of human achievements, and preparing for the world to come.”

And now back to me (instead of ChatGPT).

Overall, I think this is a good summary.  What themes resonated with you in 2025?  What would you like to hear more of?  Less of?  What’s most helpful for your walk with God?

Thank you for letting Driving Toward Morning be part of your routine in 2025 and looking forward to God’s blessings in 2026!