Best of the Blogroll: 2008

I like to close out the old year by celebrating the best post(s) of the year from various blogs on my blogroll. Best of the blogroll, 2008 edition:

• Aardvark Alley: While the Aardvark posts commemorations of many of the saints' feast days, I think he may have written this one himself to honor a feast day that, as far as I know, only Lutherans celebrate: Johann Sebastian Bach, Kantor.
  
• Ancient Hebrew Poetry: Traces speaking in tongues and Pentecost through its older Jewish history and connects the dots to the Christian Pentecost events.
  
• Anastasia's Corner: Peaceable Kingdom
  
• Bede's Journal: Hows and Whys ponders ethics and science
  
• Blogotional: Grace and Discipleship. (The post has more to say about discipleship than grace; think of it more as a critique of "cheap grace".) In Images and understanding, he writes about overcoming Christian group labels and other barriers to understanding each other.
  
• CADRE Comments: The impact of Christianity, and The Gospel of John displays characteristics of ancient historiography
  
• Chrisendom: Looking at the imagery of the Bible in Picturing the Gospel. He also provides a prayer plainly spoken.
  
• Cross Reference: I have a soft spot for music, so among the many worthy things Jeff has written this year, my favorite is probably the praise music for Advent 4.
  
• Culture Watch: The cross is not a recliner. From his professor's-eye view, he also writes My vision for a Christian college.
  
• Dan and Elle's Blog: Dan offers a critique of confirmation in It's Confirmation Time.
  
• The Dawn Treader: Posting on a topic near and dear to my heart, the Dawn Treader writes about Restoring civility, which is, I think, roughly the same as acting on the belief that other people are made in the image of God.
  
• Dr. Platypus: A Revised Tentative Philistine Timeline. I'm not saying I'm well-versed enough in ANE history to follow all the arguments; I'm saying I love history and I enjoy Dr. P's work on chronology.
  
• Faith and Theology: Sufjan Stevens: heaven in the ordinary and Against Relevance. Ben's co-blogger Kim Fabricius had a memorable Easter sermon.
  
• Familyhood Church: When did changing the world become everyone's job?
  
• Fearsome Pirate: Josh uses a lesson on the Trinity as a springboard for discussion on "What is a god?", which doesn't go where that conversation usually goes. He also had a very readable Lutheran take on the evangelical movement in A different kind of religion.
  
• Hyperekperissou: Phil introduces a traveler's tale from a pilgrimage to the holy land in the late 300's A.D. Phil also blesses the blogosphere through the Patristics Carnival.
  
• Incarnatus Est: It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful
  
• Intellectuelle: Trigger-happy forgiveness and Required knowledge
  
• Internet Monk: Lays out his call for us all to live together in respect and gladness for what we are in The "Happy enough" Protestant
  
• Meta's Blog: In What is the deal with the Old Testament, he explains a few things to the atheists who try to invalidate Christianity based on problems with the Old Testament.
  
• Proclaiming Softly: When will glory return?
  
• A Proper Cup of Tea: This author actually changed websites during the year, and the post I had bookmarked, "The mammonian heresy", is no longer where it was ... but I was so glad that someone finally found a better name for the "prosperity gospel" that I decided to mention it, even if the old blog is no longer there to link.
  
• Pseudo-Polymath: I'm sure Mark will despair of me for picking Of princes and conversion as my favorite piece of his this year
  
• Ralph the Sacred River: Book report on Eifelheim ... in which we get to see what a world-class linguist makes of sci-fi in his spare time.
  
• The Rebel God: Have you all seen Greekle yet? Any Greek / linguistics nerds, give it a look; it's a "multi-site Biblical Greek search engine parser" that he put together himself.
  
• Sun and Shield: Some quotes on joy by Tolkien, Lewis, and Le Guin.
  
• Thinklings: Followship (not a typo)
  
• Threads from Henry's Web: The Jonah Problem Redux. I'm cheating a little bit with Henry, and rather than selecting a post from his blog that is on my blogroll, I'm selecting a post of his from another of his blogs. But Jonah has long been a favorite book of mine, and for basically those same reasons.

Happy New Year to all, and my thanks to everyone on my blogroll for keeping up the blogging. A few people are linked who don't actually appear on my blogroll quite yet, but I'm getting around to that.