Pictures on a Tuesday... a day late

Here's some pictures from the week... let me know what your think

Enjoy

a long exhale...

(Insert long exhale here……)

I’ve been pushing this post off, not wanting to go here, but I must, I must report, expose, share

I must report about the amazing events of this weekend

Expose the state of my soul,

And share what’s now rumbling in my head.

 

I’ll try to do this without tears staining my computer screen.

 

Report:

This weekend was a Holy weekend for me. 

We had just shy of 200 middle schoolers and adults hanging out in cabins, auditoriums and odd recreation rooms next to an icy bay in Maryland for about a total of 40 hours. 

Those 40 hours where life to my soul.

A team of adults have been working and praying together for months to create a weekend that would drive home four scared truths.  The truth that

 

Jesus is…

… Supreme

… a brilliant creator

… in control

… is fixing everything

 

That Jesus is supreme, or matchless, to all of life’s problems.  That Jesus brilliantly created the world and you.  That Jesus is in control of the things that we can’t see or make sense of, and that, tears are now starting to form, that no matter what mess you might be facing Jesus is fixing this broken world around us.

What joy comes form seeing 200 hearts wrestling with that truth, 200 hurts being faced with those facts, 200 sets of eyes being redirected and challenged when they look in the mirror, 200 fears being quieted as questions about Grandma’s health, Dad’s job, and mom’s death rush to mind. 

Sunday morning I whelped giant drops from my eyes as we heard stores from the adults closest to these kids sharing stories of how they were grasping these truths. 

A summation of the weekend would be found in my friend Paul’s words, “I need something bigger then me… this is bigger then me”

 

Expose:

Bigger then me…

That has been my heart’s cry these past few months, to find something bigger then me, to know that how the hours and minutes of my life tick by that they are going to something greater then wasted hours of emails, hollow mortgage payments, or selfish materialist desires fulfillment. 

My heart had forgot what it was like to stand in front of a crowd and shape words into images, emotions, and truths in such a way that calls us out of our smallness and into His greatness.  I had forgotten what it feels like for your heart to scream at you “this is what makes you leap up in the morning, this is what makes you stand in the shower for an extra ten minutes talking to yourself, this is what you find yourself daydreaming about, this is what makes you come alive!”

My heart has been re-exposed to an old love… a love that it now longs to embrace again.

 

Share:

The reason why I’ve not blogged is because I could not construct words.  All I knew was that I cried Monday morning as I packed my bag for work.  Not because I dislike my job, no I’ve got a good job, but because I knew the weekend was over, constructing stories and truths would be replaced with sales pitches and fake smiles, at least for a while.

I am thankful for this season of life.  I’m and thankful for the pain and tears of the past few days.  I am thankful because in my tears, in my hearts churning, in the returning to my current reality, God has so gracious reminded me of what I was created for.  But like a seed in the ground, a caterpillar on a branch, or baby wobbling around, I must now learn the art of being patient, of being content, of trusting, and in God’s perfect timing He will do what’s best.

Others:

The last few paragraphs were a lot about me, sorry about that.  In a nutshell the weekend was simply amazing.  God moved in student’s lives, adult’s lives, my life, and it was ultimately very little about me and very much about Jesus.

 

Pictures:

Here’s a link to a smorgasbord of pictures, as you can tell most of my time was spent with the band…  Enjoy!

PS - My friend PJ blogged through the weekend.  Here's his take

pictures on a tuesday...

Here's what my camera lens has been looking at over the past week. 

Which one is your favorite.

Enjoy...

pictures on a Tuesday...

Here's the view from my camera lens as of late.... Hope you enjoy

Matthew 4

An evil invitation…

The subtle knocking on our will inviting us to a glance, a second thought, a lingered pondering. 

That knocking that says “hey have you forgotten… how do know you’re not missing out…it’s harmless fun…”

That knocking that hints at “you really do know what’s best… that they deserve what you’re about to do and then a little more…”

That knocking that in all honestly invites us to do what we really wanted to do in the first place, to finally fully give into that which we know we shouldn’t.

This knocking is in all of our lives, inviting us all into that which we know will we regret in the long run.

This knocking of temptation is a knocking I all too often answer, all too often invite in, all too often enjoy the company of.

Jesus felt this knocking and said he would not answer it’s invite and wait for what’s best.

I too feel this knocking but all too often say what can I have now.

What’s best, what’s worth waiting…

What do we do when that tap tap tap comes inviting us to do that which we know we shouldn’t?

the dance...

Our faith seems to be like a dance. 

A dance that appears to be made up of two partners, one being faith and the other action.  Faith cannot not be accompanied by action nor action act outside of faith, the two must go hand in hand.

But in my own life I’ve let one of the dance partners take too strong of a lead and overpower and maybe even overshadow the other. The guilty tyrant in this dance is faith.  I’ve let faith excuse my lake of action. 

But a echo in my life as of late has been God gently reminding me of my  need for action.  To move my belief from my heart to my hands, from my head to my feet.

This morning I was reminded of this as I read John the Baptist’s words against the Pharisee in his day.  To paraphrase him in my own words he said “the Fruit trees that are not producing fruit are about to get toppled, they’re about to be firewood”

Fruitless fruit trees? Nonsense!

Is that like a loveless Christian, or maybe a resentful Christian, or possibly a charity-less Christian?

But you don’t know what they did!

I’m so extremely busy right now.

When we’re out of this recession then I’ll be able to…

I have my excuses, I have my reasons, but God was clear, Fruit trees bear fruit, and people who are followers of the way of Jesus are moved to action.

Lunch and Coffee

Lunch at Five Guys

A little coffee at Starbucks

Now sitting at class

Today was a fun-full day 

stories, names, and a baby

A new year has come and with it the gentle reminder to pick up things once desired to do but simply overpowered and forgotten in the midst of everyday life. 

One such “desire” of mine is to blog.  I’ve been blogging off and on for a couple of years now, slowly baring my soul to an unknown audience of internet passer by-ers (nice grammar Matt). And so today I pick back up my “pen” and try and express some of my inner thoughts.  In a sense this is cheap therapy for me since I am forming and expressing my inner rumblings. 

Like many I know from my Church I am starting off the New year with a desire to read through the New Testament in 2009. I’m a couple of days late getting started but late is better then never.

Today I read the first chapter of Matthew, I said I was just getting started.  As I rolled through the genealogy of Christ, and the retelling of his birth I could not help but picture myself sitting next to a fire in the middle of a town square with a small crowd of people listening to a town elder retelling one of our greatest stories.  I image myself hanging on each of his words, and with anticipation longing to hear the unfolding of the story yet again.

I imaged myself making little mental checkboxes as the names where rattled off, like mini “ah ha” moments, as I recognized the names of the main characters of so many of my beloved stories.  The who’s-who’s list of my tradition being read, as mini dramas of their life flashed before my mind. 

The building of my faith, the reminding of my past, the culmination of all that we believe, serving not as the main story but as the opening lines of dialog.  I image the storyteller bouncing through the names with energy, speed, excitement, and then with a great exhale, pausing to let us hang in the tension of what would be next. 

Mary, a Baby, God with us, Immanuel.

Thousand of years of faith, tradition and stories all coming to one place, one moment, one manger, one teenage girl, one scared father, one little baby.

I once skimmed by the genealogies in scripture, mostly because the difficultly of the names frustrated me.  But today I read the names not as a nuisance but as a building crescendo of our faith, building through the fabric of all we hold true to lay open to the next great story, the story of Jesus.

Homemade soup, pixelmator and me

The other day while at work I found out that I got a pretty sweet deal on a program called "pixelmator" (yes, I do feel like I'm "towmator" from cars every time I say it's name, just gotta have fun with that) When I say a sweet deal, I mean something like 100% off, which really turned out to be only 70%, but it was still cheap enough for me to make the jump and get it.

I have been looking for a photoshop like program for a while now, but didn't want to spend the hundreds for Photoshop, wasn't really impressed with my free trail of Photoshop elements, but when this came across my path with a mere $15 price tag  I was convinced.

Pearl and I have had a delightfully wonderful day relaxing at home, making homemade soup, and just putzing around on our computers.  So as Pearl sleep/watched a online show I learned a little about my new found "pixelmator"

here's a couple of my first projects.  Nothing too crazy, just simple layers and effects, but still a start.