I was not expecting hundreds would join me in treading on unfamiliar terrain. A day after my post, I was amazed by the twist in viewership of my blog as gleaned from the built- in stat counter. It was unexpected. So I checked my dashboard to see what happened. This message greeted me.
Opening the stat site, I discovered that the number one referrer was Reddit.
Then, I remember that after my post, I tried to use all the services made available by the WordPress. In fact, when I registered to some services, admittedly I was not completely aware of the benefits I would get. There were times, Reddit would reprimand me for neglecting some rules in submission. When I was about to choose the subreddit, I tried to encode unfamiliar. But I could not find the word. Instead unexpected was one of those which appeared.
Thus, I click it without expecting something unexpected twist would happen. And it did happen. Thanks for Reddit.
Wikipedia has described Reddit as a social news and entertainment website where registered users submit content in the form of links or text posts. Users then vote each submission “up” or “down” to rank the post and determine its position on the site’s pages. Content entries are organized by areas of interest called “subreddits”. A blogger named Micah has made a good discussion on how Reddit works and how to use it to grow your business.
In retrospection, the phenomenal growth of this blog is unexpected, too. It has overtaken my other blogs. As of this writing, the Alexa rank is 346,546 with 2,830 views. Even its creation was unexpected. Would you ever believe that at my age and status in life, I venture to blog on love and romance? I have never done this before as shown in the niche of my other blogs. Better still, would you ever believe that I would fall in love with a woman other than my wife. But things happened unexpectedly.
But isn’t this an endearing reality in life? Significant things happened unexpectedly. The birth of Jesus whom Christians believe to be the incarnated God, the prophesied King and Savior of the world took place in an unexpected setting- a manger in a little town of Bethlehem. Mind you, the unlikely witness to such glorious event were the shepherds, considered as the lowest and most despised social groups at that time. But it was just the start of controversies unexpected of long awaited king and messiah. Later, he surrounded himself with disciples who were unschooled and ordinary, disdained tax collectors and revolutionaries. Some of his associates were dregs and outcast of the society.
Indeed, as blogger Rachel Held Evans describes, it is unexpected to find God in
Jesus, who was born as an oppressed minority in an occupied land,
Jesus who was an immigrant,
Jesus, who surrounded himself with the poor, the sick, the marginalized and the “untouchables,”
Jesus who was criticized by the religious for hanging out with sinners,
Jesus who treated women with dignity and respect,
Jesus who taught his disciples to love their enemies, to give without expecting anything in return, to overcome evil with love,
Jesus who suffered,
Jesus who wept,
Jesus who – while hanging on a Roman cross – said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Oh what an endearing reality in life. Many things happen the way we never expect them to be. For as St. Paul was quoted in the Holy Book saying: God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.make foolish wise.
Keep on following this blog for more unexpected but endearing realities in life.