Welcome to the new Space Between My Ears. Unfortunately I was unable to import the posts and comments from my earlier blog (spacebetween.blogsome.com). The new blog may not have much on it now, but it is essentially a continuation of the older blog. Please update your links. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Even though this blog really isn’t anything altogether new, I want to share a quotation from my reading for a recent history class I took for my ordination in the Covenant Church. I offer this quotation as a reminder to all of us as we write and read about important matters. It comes from a letter by David Nyvall to Otto Hogfeldt, the editor of the newspaper Hem-Missionaren. (If you cannot tell, the Covenant began as a Swedish church.) Nyvall was one of our denomination’s earliest mental giants. The letter is reprinted in Karl A. Olsson’s massive history of the Covenant, By One Spirit. I love Nyvall’s generous and gentle spirit. He writes:

May you be given, not only a sharp pen, but above everything else more and more of a burning and loving heart. Write with red ink oftener than with black. Encourage more than criticize. It is through the good that we do that we recommend ourselves, not through the evil that others do. The faults of others never become our merits. Others’ sins never become our virtues. It is sin to criticize when it does not happen in a spirit of pure and guileless love — a love which aims to help. (348, emphasis mine)

Nyvall’s call for love in the midst of dealing with important and controversial matters challenges me as the internet seems to make it easier for people to be less gracious, less civil. I love the exhortation to, “Write with red ink oftener than with black.” It is too easy to just throw something up on the blog that has not been crafted with care and love for others. May we all take seriously the call to encourage others more than we criticize.

For those wondering why I started a new site, I moved here because the host of my old blog has been slowly closing its support — hence the inability to export and import that blog’s posts — and from what I could read in the forums, most of the other users sensed it was only a matter of time before it shut down completely.