Dear friends,
October has been one of those months when I have been reminded just how much I enjoy doing this.
Looking back, I have written about a surprisingly wide range of things. Some reflections have taken me deep into familiar Bible stories and the details I had previously hurried past. Others have wandered into questions of faith, doubt, suffering, history, interpretation and the strange ways the Bible continues to challenge some of the assumptions we bring to it.
That variety is probably one of the things I enjoy most about Sacred & Secular. I never know where the next reflection is going to come from. Sometimes it begins with something I notice while reading Scripture. Sometimes it is a question somebody asks me, a conversation, something in the news or simply a thought that refuses to leave me alone.
There have been days this month when I have sat down at my desk with a very clear idea of what I wanted to write. On other days, I have started with little more than a question and discovered the reflection while writing it.
I think I prefer those days.
A small change to the daily reflections
I have also made one practical decision this month.
I am going to try to keep the daily reflections to a maximum of around 1,500 words.
I really appreciate those of you who read the reflections daily. Publishing every day means the archive grows very quickly, and I am conscious that something intended to provide a few moments of reflection should not begin to feel like homework arriving in your inbox!
There will inevitably be occasions when a subject needs a little more room, but around 1,500 words feels like a good upper limit for the normal daily reflection. Long enough to explore something properly, but short enough to sit down with a coffee and read without having to clear the afternoon.
And please never feel that you have to keep up.
One advantage of Sacred & Secular is that the articles do not disappear. If life is busy, leave them there. Come back when you have time. Browse the archive and choose something that interests you rather than worrying about what you have missed.
Paid subscribers have access to the complete archive, so there is now an enormous amount there to explore.
Actually, there is more than I realised.
Somehow, it has been a year
This month also marks one year since Sacred & Secular began.
I find that difficult to believe. What started as an experiment has gradually become the centre of my writing life and, somewhere along the way, a lovely community from around the world has formed around it.
There are now 360 articles in the archive. When I began, I could not imagine that within a year I would have written something approaching one reflection for every day on the calendar. Nor did I know whether anybody would want to read that frequently.
Yet you have. You have read, commented, emailed, disagreed, encouraged, questioned and occasionally pointed out things I had completely missed. Some of the best reflections have grown out of those conversations.
That has probably been the biggest surprise of the past year. Sacred & Secular has become so much more than somewhere I publish articles.
It has become a place where we think together, and I would very much like that to continue.
Chat is now open to everyone
That is one reason I have recently opened Sacred & Secular Chat to all subscribers, both free and paid.
I want it to become a place where we can talk between articles rather than every conversation having to sit underneath something I have written.
You can ask questions, share thoughts, respond to something in a reflection or simply join in with whatever conversation is happening.
I have already started using it for the occasional bit of advance news too. Speaking of which...
And now for the big news...
My second book is published this Sunday, 1 November.
It is called Hidden in Plain Sight, and I am ridiculously excited to finally share it with you.
The idea behind the book will be very familiar to regular readers here.
Over the past few years, I have become increasingly fascinated by the small details in Scripture that sit there on the page yet are remarkably easy to overlook. Sometimes it is a word, or an odd reaction from somebody in the story. Sometimes it is a question that appears only when we stop assuming we already know what the passage means.
Again and again, I have found that familiar Bible stories become interesting all over again when I slow down enough to notice those things.
That is what Hidden in Plain Sight is about.
The book begins in Genesis and travels through the Old Testament, into the life of Jesus, Easter and the early Church. There are strange stories, difficult passages, familiar stories viewed from slightly different angles, and a few things I had somehow spent years reading without properly seeing.
Every chapter stands alone, so this is not a book you need to sit down and read from page one to the end. You can dip into it, follow the biblical story through, use the Scripture index to find a particular passage, or take individual chapters into a home group or Bible study.
And it has become a much bigger book than I intended.
My first Sacred & Secular book, Finding God in the Ordinary, was 262 pages.
Hidden in Plain Sight is 440 pages.
When I put the two paperback copies side by side, the difference is dramatic. This is by far the most substantial book I have written, with nearly 180 additional pages.
Apparently, once I started looking for things hidden in plain sight, I found quite a lot of them.
The Kindle edition is already available to pre-order, and I discovered this week that three people had somehow pre-ordered it before I had even properly announced it, which was a lovely surprise.
Thank you
There is something strange about releasing a book that has grown out of the writing I have been doing here.
A few of the questions, themes and discoveries in Hidden in Plain Sight have developed during the same period in which Sacred & Secular itself has been growing. The book and this community are not really separate projects. They have shaped each other.
That makes me particularly grateful to those of you who support this work.
Whether you are a paid subscriber, a free subscriber, somebody who reads every day or someone who appears once every few weeks when a title catches your attention, thank you.
A year ago, I did not know what Sacred & Secular would become. Three hundred and sixty articles later, I am still not entirely sure.
But I am enjoying finding out.
And on Sunday, a large part of that first year becomes a 440-page book.
I cannot wait for you to see it.
Hidden in Plain Sight is published tomorrow in paperback and Kindle.