Some surprises are happy ones. Others are tragic. Many are unexpected. Some are scheduled, like Christmas and birthdays. No matter what the situation, we take what we have and move on.
I was left with nothing.
Several months ago, I received an email message saying my Facebook account “didn’t meet community standards.” Really? I knew community standards weren’t what they used to be, but I didn’t think Facebook regarded Christian principles as hate crimes. What happened? I couldn’t contact anyone to find out. They never answered my emails.
In a single day, I lost almost 5,000 friends and I don’t know how many thousands of followers. Except for a few hundred people I really know, most of them found me and liked what I had to say. The idea of building another Facebook account, at the risk of losing everything again, didn’t appeal to me. I had other things to do. Nevertheless, a couple of weeks ago, I created a new Facebook account. I’ve made no posts to it at all. I’ve added no friends. Now, Facebook says this account doesn’t meet community standards. Looks like I may never be allowed access to any Facebook account.
What am I doing?
For thirty years, I’ve been working on a biblical paraphrase and many thousands of discussion question. One milestone was Eyewitness: The Life of Christ Told in One Story, published in 2008. Next came The Discussion Bible — New Testament, published ten years later. By 2023, I expect to have the entire Bible with a flood of discussion questions as print books, an ebook, and an online application open for Q/A. With that, maybe the Lord can acquire a few million friends. We shall see.
If you’ve been as busy as I have been, you haven’t had time to notice the absence of FrankBall.org blogs. Of course, the video blogs on Facebook still have to be rebuilt on YouTube. That’s a learning curve I don’t have much time for, right now. To help some of my writer friends, I did post “Seriously Funny” at this link: https://youtu.be/SfuTKO2MhMU.
I’m all about helping people with their stories.
Last week, I spoke about “The Write Point of View” to a gathering of writers in Dallas. All but one of my copies of my book Storytelling at Its Best were sold. On Labor Day weekend, I’ll be in Oklahoma to speak at WriterCon 2022, a fabulous conference where I taught last year. I’m sure this year will be even more spectacular.
Get ready.
On September 1, I’ll resume regular posts of FrankBall.org stories, muse, and news. And I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about my progress with The Discussion Bible.