The Hebrew Diary

Did you have a diary when you were a kid? The kind with a clasp and key? This text reads like a diary entry.

What do Alanis Morissette, Bob Dylan, Che Guevara, Alec Guinness, Courtney Love, Stevie Nicks, George S. Patton, Henry David Thoreau, Queen Victoria, Andy Warhol and -- wait for it -- John Wesley ... have in common?

This is a motley collection of names. The commonality is that they all kept or keep diaries. Probably some of us have as well -- but not all of us, for it takes a certain mindset and outlook to stick to daily journaling.

For example, one of the writers on the Homiletics team says that the idea of keeping a journal had long appealed to him, and he made several attempts to do so. But each time, after a few weeks, he found the actual act of making daily entries simply one more chore on his to-do list, and before long, he abandoned the effort.

Vampire Diaries. The TV series. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005). That's about it for most of us when it comes to anything with the word "diary" in it. Maybe you remember Bridget Jones's...