I’ve been working on the theme and HTML here for the last few days to try and get things a little easier to navigate and a bit more aesthetically pleasing. I switched to the Genesis framework for WordPress back in December, but really didn’t play around with the features much until this week. I added Genesis’ Prose child theme yesterday and have actually spent a good deal of time playing with some the features on the back end. There is more flexibility than I realized and not a lot of need to get into the HTML unless you want to get really adventurous.

I’ll get it all tweaked in in a day or two and get back to blogging. It actually feels good to be writing again. Three months off was too long. And I really need to finish that series on Hell so that I can get into my next series. I may start looking at some of the issues surrounding the various preterist hermeneutics, full and partial.

I started a blogging break in late November that got extended and extended again. I planned to be back be Jan 1, but life kept happening. I had a serious illness, then home issues and work issues continued to keep me from getting back to my blog.

Most of those issues are somewhat resolved, although I am preparing for a Tres Dias retreat in a month that will consume a good bit of my time. Nonetheless, I hope to get back to blogging on at least a semi-regular basis later this week. My Hell series is nearly done, and I wish to complete it, and there are a good many other things to blog about, not the least Rob Bell’s new book that will soon be out.

Some may have noticed that I have exceeded the Dec. 1 resumption of my blog. This was unfortunate, but unavoidable. I am going to have to further extend my blog break to at least the middle of December for several reasons.

First is THE MOVE. We had plans for making a move into a smaller abode sometime after the first of the year, but circumstances dictated differently. I have spent the last two weeks packing and the movers show up on Saturday. So between packing, moving and unpacking, my plate is pretty full right now.

Secondly is the Tres Dias Website that I am am responsible for. I was building a website using Joomla for our new Tres Dias community for which our first retreat is scheduled this coming April. Unfortunately, Joomla turned out to be a few levels above my paygrade, and two weeks ago I scrapped the entire thing and have begun rebuilding the website using the WordPress Genesis Framework. I will have MUCH more to say about Genesis in later posts…it is WONDERFUL! Consequently, I am now using Genesis for my blog as well (although I have  great deal of tweaking left to to here on the blog).

I need to have our Tres Dias website up and running and under the approval of the rest of our Tres Dias Secretariat by Jan. 1, so I am spending nearly all of my spare time on it right now. I have a report due on my progress on Dec. 11 and hope to be 90% complete by then.

With Advent upon us and Christmas right around the corner plus all of the other factors that I just lined out, finding the time to blog is going to be all but impossible for the next couple of weeks, and very difficult after that, at least until the first of the year.

So….hopefully I will be able to through a post up here or there sometime after the middle of December and then resume my normal blogging after January 1st. I miss my blog. My blog misses me. But we will be reunited soon enough. And, oh yea…I miss all of the wonderful people who stop by and share their thoughts and comments.

The last week has been pretty much a “controlled disaster”. Some very bizarre things happened to my WordPress site which I am still in the process of trying to fix. My sister-in-law died unexpectedly and because of two dysfunctional extended families (mine as well as hers), getting the funeral arrangements taken care of was quite a challenge to say the least. I may take some time at a later date to talk more about this, as well as of my nephew of whom I feel very responsible for now that both of his parents are gone. It will probably be a long-overdue “sins-of-the-fathers”  and “breaking generational curses” post.

It has been a very draining week, physically, mentally as well as spiritually. I have probably spent more time in prayer over the last few days than in quite a while. I thank all of those who have joined me in prayer, both those here in the Interwebs as well as my close friends of whom I’ve spent a good deal of time on the phone with. But I know that God is with me and that He is in control of everything, even if I don’t always understand “why”.

With all of that said, I’ll be resuming my series on hell tomorrow or the next day, and will begin looking at Jesus’ use of Hades in the Gospels. The post on Lazarus and the Rich Man promises to be interesting. I also have several unrelated posts that I want to get to over the course of the next week, including a book review as well as the “sins-of-the-father” post(s) that I mentioned earlier. Things are about as back to as “normal” as they ever seem to be.

Visitors may have noticed some strange goings-on here the last couple of days.

For some reason, my CSS stopped CSSing, or something like that. I had to load everything from backup, and then none of my widgets worked. It was time for a facelift anyway, so if you drop by and the entire page is upside-down or you experience some other strange anomalies, that means that I am still in the process of tweaking my code. Hopefully I’ll have it where I am happy with it in a day or so.