The Happy Monday truck doesn’t look like it’s aged a day. You wouldn’t age either if your image was digitally manipulated and then just reposted on occasion for the next several years. Fail Blog used to “send in the Fail boat” so I thought maybe Happy Monday could be delivered by box truck.

This is not Happy Monday post number 500. That will happen on Monday, October 10th. This post is about that historic event, not the event itself. Monday’s post will keep the same format that you hopefully know and love. With little variation every post starts with a meme, cartoon or some item designed to grab your interest. Maybe there is a short commentary, maybe not. Then we have an Old Testament verse, a New Testament verse and two quotes. The verses will be thought provoking, uplifting or worshipful by describing God’s attributes. Most of the time one quote will be from a Christian author, preacher, missionary or recording artist and the other could feature anyone from Nelson Mandela to Maya Angelou. Then you get five memes, cartoons, pics of doggos or some such. We try to mix up photographs, drawings and items that are just words. There is a thought process, if it wasn’t apparent.

In the early days one of the goals was to catch folks up on things they might have missed over the weekend. There were news headlines, updates on events of public interest, a lot of written copy and fewer images. This post from September 2012 explains the purpose of Happy Monday, at the time. This post, Happy Monday #21, is typical of what the Monday posts looked like each week. There’s a lot to read, one quote and one funny bit. By February of 2013 the format started to take shape but the length still varied each week and the order was totally random.

Here’s an interesting exemple from June of 2014. If you don’t click any other link in this post click this one: Happy Monday #95. There’s a lot of quotes and scripture verses with very few memes. Notice that Clark Bunch is still listed as the author but there is a repeating gif of Van Til at the end. The idea of what he does at The Master’s Table has evolved over time as well.

Much like the Happy Monday truck, Van Til is a figment of my imagination. He was actually a figment of Michael Spencer’s imagination first, helping produce the Internet Monk Radio podcast. In the early episode intros he refers to technical aspects being handled by “Van Til, the BHT’s magic tail chasing dog” and in episode #14 you can hear him bark at about the 6:28 mark. iMonk Radio was a podcast so there was never any visual cues of what Van Til might look like. In 2014 I imagined him as a golden retriever type dog, maybe a blonde lab, as I really didn’t understand the difference between those two breeds. As a tribute to Michael Spencer I announced that Van Til was being brought on at The Master’s Table as my editor. I later created an email address, vantilspencer@outlook.com, so that he could log in and author Happy Monday himself… so to speak. His Gravatar profile explains that he has a master’s degree in English but does not talk. If you send email he will reply but dogs have no concept of the passage of time so he doesn’t check his inbox very often.

The amount of content and the way it is presented has changed over the years. Some of what got cut out of the Happy Monday format later appeared as the Satur-deja Vu. Looking back through the archives, I was reminded how much blogging I used to do. There 1,831 posts online at The Master’s Table and only 500 of those are Happy Monday. The nature of blogging has changed, the look of Happy Monday has changed and let’s be honest, the world has changed over the past decade. In just the past two years we have dealt with a global pandemic, supply chain crises, and a war in the Ukraine which could go nuclear on the whim of Vladimir Putin.

One thing about Happy Monday has never changed: I hope you enjoy it.

The world is a scary place. The outlook is sometimes grim. But for the Christian believer this world is not our home. We are pilgrims and strangers, looking above and pressing toward the mark and prize. We are to be salt and light in this world. We cannot save the world but we are surrounded by individuals every day that can be saved. We must not be discouraged. We must encourage one another to good works, building one another up (edifying the body) as we build the Kingdom. To that end I preach sermons, write blog posts, volunteer at a food bank, eat home cooked meals with my family… and share cute doggo pics and memes about coffee. A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. -Proverbs 17:22

Work hard. Study well. Pray. All of these things are important. But remember that God also commanded us to rest. When a 3-year-old hands you a pretend phone, answer it. There will be wars and rumors of war, on earth and spiritually in high places. But God made sunsets, and hummingbirds, and derpy dogs that can’t pull their tongues in. In this life there will always be Mondays. And for as long as we can my imaginary golden retriever and I will be there with a cup of coffee and a bad pun saying “here, see if this helps.”