Advent

"I can't WAIT until Christmas Eve!"

That's what my daughter said to me, the day after Thanksgiving. It struck me as a bit unusual, since it's Christmas day when we open our presents. But she's looking forward to the excitement on Christmas Eve. The traditions we have. The anticipation.

That's what Advent is -- anticipation. Waiting. And knowing that what we are waiting for is worth the wait, no matter how long it will be.

Think about the nation of Israel. They were promised a Deliverer, a Messiah. They knew He was coming. They waited for him.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited. They waited so long that they forgot what they were being delivered from. They forgot the point, and decided He was coming to deliver them from the Romans. But they still waited.

In Luke 2, we read about Simeon, a man who had been promised a look at that Deliverer before he died. When he saw the Christ child, he rejoiced, knowing that the Deliverer had come. The wait had been worth it.

We've become an impatient people. Our high speed Internet is still too slow -- I can remember when I upgraded to a 56k modem from our old 14.4, and I still think that my new, high speed cable connection is slow at times. We don't like to wait at all.

Sometimes we think we are waiting for something that will never come. We decide we must have misunderstood someone somewhere, and that what we're waiting for isn't coming at all. We think we may have missed it completely; it came already, when we weren't looking, and we didn't notice it. We keep waiting, we think, in vain for something that isn't coming. Or we give up completely, and stop anticipating.

We're promised something in Scripture; we're promised that "This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. (Acts 1:11)" We anticipate that coming, just as Israel anticipated His first coming. We don't know when it will happen, in spite of some really ridiculous things that we say about him coming in, oh, say, 1988, or 2000, or 2012. We don't know when He's coming back. Sometimes, we think that we've missed it; that the Preterists are right, and He really came back in 70AD and nobody seems to have noticed it. Sometimes we think that maybe He isn't coming back after all. But we've got that promise in Acts. He's coming back just like He left.

As we enter this season of Advent, the season of anticipation, let's remember that we still have something to look forward to. And celebrate, because it will be worth all the waiting we've done.

Twitter and Me

I guess this goes under the New Media category. NOt sure, and don't really care. I'm plotting the complete overhaul of this blog (yeah, yeah -- you've said that before), so it doesn't matter much to me at this point.

I've been Twittering for a while now -- almost a year, by the looks of my Twitter archive (64 pages, 1,278 Tweets). In that time, I've developed a sort of personal code regarding Twitter usage.

If you don't know what Twitter is, you need to watch this video before you read any further:

Now that we're on the same page .....

To use Twitter successfully, you have to lay out some ground rules. A normal person cannot follow 20,000 people meaningfully (and yes, I know about Scoble, and no, he's not a normal person. He's Scoble.). I know a lot of people have published their Twitter rules, and I've borrowed from so many of them that I cannot begin to give them credit for any of this. Suffice to say, if I follow you on Twitter, and you've published your "rules," I've probably borrowed from you. Thanks.

The first thing you have to decide is who to follow. I didn't go out and start following everyone in sight; there are a few categories of people that I follow. In fact, I use TweetDeck so that I can follow different "groups" of Twitterers.

I follow New Media people. Podcasters, web video people, etc. People who are using new media for marketing. I learn a LOT from these people, and not all of them are big names.

I follow people of faith. If you look at the 285 people I follow, you'll find a lot of Godbloggers and pastors there. I learn from these folks, too.

I follow some political people right now. At the moment I'm testing this out, just to see if I want to keep it up.

I follow a lot of people using the Internet and Web 2.0 tools to entertain. I'm hoping to elaborate on this later on, so I won't say any more right now.

I follow people I know, or have met, or have "met" online.

So, who DON'T I follow? I don't follow people just because they follow me, even though I used to. If you follow me, I will look at your Twitter profile, read your Tweets, and see if I want to know what you have to say. I'm pretty picky, so don't be offended if I don't follow you. Interestingly, it looks like the standard dropoff time is about two weeks. If I haven't followed someone two weeks after they follow me, they stop following me. Oh well. I don't unfollow people who don't follow me -- I just decide that I don't have anything to say that they're interested in. One thing I DO make sure I do, though: if you send me an @ message, I get it. Some people only get those from folks they follow, but I get them from anyone who @'s me.

I don't follow people who only use Twitter to promote their blog. Hey, I use Twitterfeed too, but it's not the only thing I Tweet. If I just wanted to find out when you post to your blog, I'd subscribe to it.

I don't follow spammers. You know who you are. I don't follow people who have nothing on their profile. I usually don't follow people who don't include a website in their profile, but will make exceptions.

I follow 285 people, and have 212 following me. And that's enough; I want to be able to make use of Twitter, and not as a popularity contest.