Happy New Year to all!
May you all find yourself safe and comfortable and in calm waters this coming year.
I'd like to take a moment to share a few thoughts from 2023. I have to confess I was concerned for a while that our site was dwindling and interest was waning. I could see that month by month we had fewer and fewer views, and indeed for the year we finished at 2.8 million vs a healthy four-plus million for 2022. That might sound alarming if one did not consider some significant factors. First of all, people were flat-out busy. Economics alone has forced people to work longer and perhaps at multiple jobs. That leaves less play time to spend at places like this.
I was sick with the onslaught of Rheumatoid Arthritis for over half the year. As much as I (really do) hate to admit it, I seem to be the generator of a lot of the conversation here. I write up some crazy project and many of you respond and so it goes. That has never been my intent, by the way. I just want to host this place and allow all of you to build content. Some of you have and others have fallen away. So that is that and the way of the world I suppose. But then I look at the content and consistency we have here. Members tell me they open their day up with a quick check of the site to see what's happening in this little world. Then we have Matt's scripture of the day which has been seen some 80,000 times. That's a lot of lookin' at God's word, right? Ken's thread WDYDT which he tossed up one day started a conversation which by the end of the year was viewed one and one quarter of a million times! That's some continuity right there!
We continued to add members and overall, the content has been pretty good. We watched Sean move and build a new home. We saw Sam thaw out and then refreeze ;-). JR finally got a building, Cuda moved, one of the Daves got a parking lot-sized roof, and the other drove all over in a bright yellow truck. We saw children growing and Sean told us about a new Army Tank. Tex built all sorts of cool stuff and reloaded some things too. Heck, we saw a lot of growth, great advice, and friendly commentary. Seems kind of like a cohesive family going on about living to me.
I thought for a while that we may not survive during those times of dwindling numbers, but now I think it is just part of the ebb and flow of life juxtaposed into this little corner of humanity. Looking at those numbers I want to share several instances of what I think were godly interventions. I was thinking about how the numbers of viewers were trending down, getting lower and lower. I even discussed with my wife about shutting down the site. I mentioned it here and on the same day...THE VERY SAME DAY we got our all-time highest number of views of 3316! Now, of course, a lot of that were robots or web crawlers or whatever you call them, but it happened at the point where I was questioning that exact point!
I even sat here at my desk early in December watching the monthly totals decline and thinking we wouldn't even hit 200,000. But look what happened. We hit over 400,000, the most for the entire year. It seems every time I get a little skeptical about this forum, God or someone intervenes and sends me a clear message. Take the Christmas giving for example. It started slow, and some of the traditional givers did not show up, and that's OK, but it had me questioning whether I should be doing it in the first place. That's when I happened to be looking at the fact that that certain member donated it up to equal $xx3.16 Looking at the statistics, I couldn't help but notice that we also had 316 members and that we had 3316 views. Then I noticed the stack up of the last two members who joined Dec 03 and November 16. Stacked in the screen those dates look like 0316! That's not a coincidence any more than random chemical reactions and lightning created life.
Then when I took that $853.16 to that mom for Christmas, she told me that was exactly what she needed after I confessed that I wished it had been more.
So we go on. It is clear to me that I am not in charge, and I surrender to the will of the almighty as he does whatever it is that he is doing here. I'll just go day to day and see what happens next. I think the chickens are coming home to roost this year. Our debt payment on the money the nation borrows now exceeds the amount we collect in taxes or will in just months. We are technically bankrupt as a nation. Inflation will surely result. Then there's the BRIC scheming to dislodge the US Dollar as the world's trading currency. If they can do that we are done, really done. All that and a much wider war is about to erupt as Iran, unafraid of Biden is openly attacking well beyond their borders and Israel might soon be under attack from everywhere. Where that all leads is anyone's guess, but the outcome at best is not good and at worse has a radioactive atmosphere for the world to breathe. The millions of illegals invading the country who are bankrupting our cities are going to cause our largest cities to cave in. The likes of New York, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, and others are just going to devolve into something like Haiti. Americans do not trust their government and the Republican candidate is being played off as an arriving dictator. Could his election result in a civil war?
I just can't find much of a reason to be hopeful for our nation in 2024, but in a way that is a good thing. You see the United States has always been a firm bedrock that was unshakeable. But now with rotting timbers and a leaky basement sitting on a crumbling foundation, soon all we'll have left is faith in our Lord Jesus Christ to rely on. Now I ask you, is that such a bad thing?
Certainly not, and therefore I am hopeful for those of us who believe and for some reason perhaps this little Godly corner of the universe may remain a beacon of light in the coming darkness. Whatever comes, I'll try and keep the light on.
