It’s the last day of 2020. It’s not the end of the effects of the year, of course. Those will spill into tomorrow and into the rest of your life.

But today is the last day.

Last days are good times to stop and say, “Here’s what I think I want to remember from this year.” It could be a lesson or a saying or a moment or an experience or a commitment. But you know what comes to mind when I say that.

Write it down.

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That’s the assignment for today for our Advent journal. I decided I wanted to write down some of the things from my year.

This year I published three books. Publishing a funeral book when funeral stopped was probably not great timing, but it’s done.

This year I started following young theological writers on twitter, as a way to redirect my thinking from other stuff on twitter. @madisonpierce, Brandon Smith, Jennifer Guo, Karen Swallow Prior, and others Years ago, I reviewed Michael Bird’s systematic theology book. Now I read his tweets. And I added Pastor Writer and Church Grammar to my running podcasts.

This year I read about brain tumors (and faith) and a biblical hermeneutic called Black ecclesial interpretation and words and lists.

This year I passed the 3000 posts mark and together we raised a bunch of money to help kids being rescued from trafficking.

This year I started posting at Instagram and Facebook every time I go for a run. It was a way to give myself some accountability. And it helped me (and maybe some of you.)

This year we lived with cats in the house for more than two months and survived. (and shared photos).

This year I helped other people understand what it’s like to be in a hospital during a global pandemic. And I worked on not being upset with people who didn’t understand what it’s like.

This year Nancy and I spent more time together and learned to be more grateful than ever.

Paul will be writing here tomorrow, and the first week of January will be reruns. I’ll see you with new posts after that.

Thanks for coming along for this year.