More bloggers have quit this week than is usual. Then again there are more bloggers than there were in the past, so that shouldn’t be a big surprise.. Tim Drake’s valedictory seems to call the very legitimacy of blogging into question.

Tim rightfully points out that blog activity can feed pride on the part of the blogger. No doubt that this can be true. I realize that my blog has not been and isn’t likely to ever be as popular as Tim’s or many others , so perhaps I’m not the most well-positioned to discuss the advisability of blogging. Nevertheless, one of the great things about blogs, though, is that they are rather undefined. The blog can be what the blogger wants it to be. Most blogs are part conversation and part journal.

The name of one particular blog is, I think, an apt description of all blogs – Perpetual Ephemera. Because blogs are out there on someone’s server and we don’t know just who might cache or archive something, there is a degree of permanence to them. At the same time, they tend to be filled with the ephemera that occupies so much of our consciousness in the moment – things that might be hard for us to remember at some point in the future.

For a few years, I carried on a near-daily e-mail correspondence with a friend. The messages were, like a blog, part conversation and part journal. I’ve saved some. Looking at them years later reminds me of parts of my past that might otherwise be lost to me. Looking at them helps me to better know my friend too.

A few years ago I found a letter my father had written to his family from occupied Austria in the summer of 1945. He had forgotten not only the letter, but many of the sentiments and plans he mentioned. That letter, though, helped me to see a side of him I could not have known any other way. I’m grateful for that glimpse into him.

The same can be said for blogs. True, we don’t know every detail of our fellow-bloggers. I have neither the need nor the right to do so, nor would I want other bloggers to know absolutely everything about me. What comes across, though, is usuually not only the public face of the writer, but quite a few of the unguarded moments in which we speak without pretense. This is especially true of the comment feature that makes blogs so conversational.

Just as in any other group, there are some bloggers I like more than others. That’s just part of our human nature. Sure I like to hear people agree with me and give me positive feedback. That’s part of human nature too. But better yet is to come to know other people and share in a community with them. Blogs allow that.

Just as it’s wrong to use a hammer to beat someone over the head, but right to use a hammer to build a house, so the blog can be used for good or for bad. May God grant me grace to use the blog for good purposes and not for self-aggrandizement.