Killing Time

This morning we awoke to a world of sparkling white fluff covering everything. Luckily I got off work in time to throw on a hat and coat, hop in the car, and capture a bit of it.

With much fear and trepidation, I’ve finally ordered my first box of really big paper for the new printer. The guys over at Luminous Landscape gave it such a good review, and the price was reasonable, so I figured it was about time to give it a try. I’ve done some 8 x 10’s and some 11 x 14s (on 13 x 19 paper) so far and been really impressed. It seems that other people have been impressed with the quality of the prints so far. I have frames to accommodate my first big prints, so stay tuned for a picture of the completed wall sometime in the near future.

If any of my math teachers had ever told me you could do THIS with math, I might have paid more attention in math class.

Amazing stuff. It reminds me of fractals, but I don’t know what the mathematical relationship is between the two. Click on the pictures if you want to read more.

It’s still surprising to me that something that happened 12 years ago can still evoke the same sense of wonder now that it did then. It was right before Christmas, December 17th to be exact, that God suddenly showed up in my life again after a long absence. To this day, I can’t listen to the familiar hymns of Christmas without reliving those first weeks of hearing the words for what seemed like the first time and realizing bit by bit that this was no fairy story as I had long believed, but it had really happened.

Hark! the herald angels sing
Glory to the new-born King!

The new-born King? King? I’ve been treating him like dirt my entire life . . .

Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!

I remember attending a performance of The Marriage of Figgaro in about 1985. The music was wonderful, but the opera part wasn’t doing a whole lot for me, mostly because it was in another language. Somewhere toward the end, though, everything changed as the music alone just reached right into my soul and pierced all the way through to something I didn’t even know existed. Suddenly my eyes were full of tears and I just wanted . . . . There were no words for what I wanted, but that haunting sense of longing for something I couldn’t even name never really left. What I wanted then, and wandered lost for another dozen years trying to find was what this song talks about – reconcilliation with God.

Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,

I have to admit, I was pretty content with the idea of being worm food after I “passed on.” No need to get all worried about hell or anything nasty like that. All of the sudden, though, the idea of eternity started to make its way into my consciousness.

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;

There’s that King thing again. What have I been doing all my life?

He rules the world with truth and grace,
and makes the nations prove
the glories of His righteousness,
and wonders of His love,

How can righteousness and love go together in the same sentence?

Oh holy night!
The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices

A thrill of hope . . . Is that what’s stirring around in my soul? Hope? Why would that be so thrilling about hope to an optimist like me? But it was.

Fall on your knees

Fall on my knees? Is that what I need to do?

What child is this, who, laid to rest
On Mary’s lap, is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:
Haste, haste to bring him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary!

Haste! Haste! All my life I’ve been running as far and as fast away from this Babe as I can. Lots of ground to cover back in the other direction. Haste! Haste!

O come, all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem;
Come and behold him,
Born the King of angels;
O come, let us adore him,
O come, let us adore him,
O Come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

Come and behold him . . . O come, let us adore him. This is what gets me. The instant the Christian radio station came on in my car that December day, I knew it was Him that did it, and I knew that what I really deserved was to be squashed like a bug for the many and various ways I had, often deliberately, rebelled against my maker. And yet . . . I knew that this was also someone who loved me enough to bring my headlong rush to destruction to a screeching halt. I have to adore someone like that. I MUST find out who he is and what’s next.

Begotten, not created;

This is God I’m dealing with — no longer a figment. Figments don’t make things happen in the “real” world.

Yea, Lord, we greet thee,
Born this happy morning;
Jesus, to thee be glory given;
Word of the Father,
Now in flesh appearing

I still relish those words – “Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.” When we did the John study, I thought for sure since I was getting a 3-month head start that I would have the questions all done before we started. Little did I know that I would spend the next three months exploring that one Word that John confronts us with right at the beginning of his Gospel. What a marvellous thing God has done to appear in flesh for us. What amazed and astounded me and still thrills my soul is that except for the flesh part, Jesus is the same Word of God that we see all through the Scriptures. I didnd’t know that then. I just knew it was an incredible thing that I hadn’t even begun to get my mind around. Like dipping my little toe into an infinite ocean and sensing the raw power of the thing even though I’ve only touched the edge of it. Twelve years later, I still get that feeling that I’ve only touched the edge of that great ocean.

While I still suspect that we might be off a month or two on the actual date (check out when Zachariah was actually serving in the temple and do a little math . . . .), and I’m positive that most of the trappings of the season are purely pagan in origin, I love the songs, and I love that God stepped into my life just when these songs were being played on the radio, in the stores, and everywhere – all the time. No wonder atheists get irritated this time of year.

Reading another article at SciAm today – The Moral Call of the Wild: A study suggests that spending time in nature changes our values. The basic gist of the article is a new study has “shown” (I’d have to see more about the structure and methodology of the study to remove the quotes) that people who spend more time in the natural world are more other-focused and less self-focused. They suggest that the trend of our society spending less and less time outside with the birds and bees over the last 30 or 40 years is correlated with us becoming more and more self-focused, and that time spent in nature actually changes our values. Interesting concept.

I’ve always loved being outside. For a time in my teens and 20s, I would get distinctly anxious if I couldn’t spend enough time in the outdoors. I still get mildly depressed in the winter when the light level drops and bounce back again in the spring, but the angst I used to experience has gone away since I became a Christian. What I really found interesting about the article, though, was one of the comments by “Babbin” –

Since when is caring about others more important than caring about yourself?

Wow! Like since the whole of recorded history, dude!

When I decided to officially embrace atheism just after high school, I did my own unofficial comparative religion study (I would do this again later, officially, in college which simply confirmed the conclusions I had come to a decade earlier in my unofficial study). As a result of that study, I concluded that all religion was the result of man trying to explain the unexplainable, and the the various rules and regulations that each of them came up with were what gave society its stability and structure, but there was really no absolute moral right or moral wrong. (Of course, that doesn’t explain the GUT WRENCHING when you hear about a man putting his girlfriend’s kids into a pot of boiling water on the stove.) Also as a result of that study, I adopted as my personal “standard” the one “rule” that seemed to show up everywhere I looked – The Golden Rule – don’t do to anyone else what you wouldn’t want them to do to you.

Oh, wait! That’s not it! The way Jesus put it is a little different. He said –

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

There’s actually quite a bit of difference between the passive version, which a lot of religions have codified – don’t do – and the active version found in Christianity – DO – take the first step – don’t wait for someone else to act first – it’s up to you.

Funny that even though I only had one rule I felt obligated to try and keep, I couldn’t even keep that rule. Why? Because I spent way more time caring about myself than I ever did caring about anyone else. In the last 10 years of walkling with Christ, I’ve found out that there’s only one way to keep that one rule – care more about others than you do about yourself. And the only way I can consistently care more about others than I do about myself is when I care about God first. Jesus said that if we kept those 2 rules – Love God, Love People – we would fulfill ALL the rest.

Reminds me of the song we used to sing in Sunday School when I was a kid:

Jesus and Others and You;
What a wonderful way to spell joy . . .

I hope Babbin discovers that bit of truth someday. Now do like your mom said – Go out and play.

I knew this going in, but with the acquisition of a large format printer (the Epson 3880 – more on that later – so far very impressive) comes a whole ‘nuther skill set – color management. I’ve been poking around the edges of this without really doing much about it as long as I’ve been manipulating photos on the computer and creating web pages on the Internet. Now it’s time to get serious. In order to help me do that, I began looking at color calibration tools as soon as I started seriously considering the Epson. No sense having a nice printer like that if I can’t get the prints I expect to out of it.

After looking at several of the moderately priced systems, I finally settled on the Spyder3 Studio by Datacolor (they have a newer model out now – the Spyder3 Studio SR). Why? Mainly I liked what I was reading in the reviews, and the system could handle both ends of the process – monitor and printer – without breaking the budget.

Installation of the software and callibration of my laptop monitor was a breeze. I’m seeing variations of color in all my applications that were never there before. Subjectively, the results are great.

When it came time to try the printer callibration, I ran into a glitch in the Windows version of the software that made it impossible to proceed through reading the target pattern. That might have been an annoyance except that the technical support was the best I’ve ever received from any company I’ve ever dealt with in the 20+ years I’ve been working with computers. After exchanging several emails with David Miller, Senior Software Developer, there was a new release of the software published before I even had a chance to get home the next day. And then he went above and beyond and took a look at my first profile and made some suggestions.

In a world that has largely settled for mediocre in just about any area you might want to consider, Datacolor’s customer service is simply outstanding.

to think rationally? The following is a poll that appeared on my screen as I was reading an article at Scientific American today.

Now, maybe I’m just thinking too literally here, but aren’t all of these choices various government schemes to force us into using LESS in the way of fossil fuels? So what do any of them have to do with developing NEW SOURCES of oil and gas?

Anything?

With all the nonsense coming out of Washington these days, I wonder how much longer we’ll be able to call ourselves the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Well, the year is quickly drawing to a close. Fall color is quickly flying past, and it’s time to take look back at the “New Year’s resolution post” and check progress.

- Get Organized. Nope. Not an inch of progress. I did manage to give the site a face lift this summer, though.

- Show Off. Currently working on selecting some pictures to make LARGE living room sized prints from. Contests? I’ve entered a few online that weren’t outright “rights grabs” where you have to give up all your rights to your photo whether you win the contest or not. Last night, though, I actually did win a place in my very first photo contest with this shot:

I guess the winning photos will be in the newspaper sometime in the near future, so I guess I get another 15 minutes of fame. Sharing online? Some sort of consistency would probably help. Still struggling there.

- Try something new. Well, just about the time the weather was getting nice enough for me to start getting out the Bender, we had to go and move. Now that the year is nearly over, I’m finally pretty much done with all that, so I hope to start playing with that again. I’ve been looking at large format printers since the summer. My husband may have just made it possible for me to actually acquire one of these, and I believe there is still a rebate going on for the one I want which will make the price much more appealing, so it’s possible that by the end of the year I’ll be delving into the other end of the photographic process – making prints worth putting up on the walls.

- New perspectives. While the technical skills continue to improve making it easier for me to reproduce in two dimensions what I see in three, I’m still fleshing out how I uniquely see the world.

- Do some good. It’s a pleasure to use my photography skills and equipment in service to Christ. It’s probably an odd thing to do, but I told a pastor here, “You know how some people dedicate their babies? I dedicate my cameras.” And I do. It’s God who has given both the equipment I have and the skill to use it, and when I get a new camera or lens, I take it to church with me and lay it on the altar and dedicate it to the Lord’s service first. Do I get a lot of pleasure from it that’s not at all related to serving the Lord? Absolutely! But if that ever begins to take first place in my heart, I have a tangible reminder of where my blessings come from and who really owns “my” stuff, and that’s a blessing too. I’d still like to explore this area in more depth, though. As far as teaching, since my daughter is the one who inherited my Rebel, I get the pleasure of throwing her a tip or new technique to try now and then, as well as watching her progress.

- Challenge myself. The photowalks have sort of come to an end during the moving process. Not to say that it will stay that way forever, but . . . . Taking pictures of people I don’t know. Is it only photographers who react badly to having their picture taken? Maybe just some photographers.

- Start a project. The only “project” currently in the works is trying to decorate the new place with some of my photographs. Mostly, it’s my own indecision holding that one up. I finally made some small prints of potential candidates while mom and dad were here, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.

- Take my camera everywhere. Definitely. Good move.

Here’s another picture entered in last night’s contest that didn’t win. Enjoy.

Or, more specifically, what makes a church MY church?

I’ve always enjoyed visiting other churches during my travels. Reasons for choosing a particular church have ranged anywhere from, “I have to get on the road early, and this one has an early service,” to “This one is closer to the hotel than that one.” It’s a little different when you’ve moved to a new city and now you’re looking for a new “home.” It’s still been very enjoyable to scope out the religious environment (at least the Baptist environment) here; kind of like an extended vacation.

But let me back up a bit.

My first contact with Baptists of any sort was related in my “What’s Your Life Verse” post and the follow up. After going to the local Southern Baptist Church with Mr. G and his family for a while, I actually did make a profession of faith and was baptised. Unfortunately, while I might have been sincere about something or other, it certainly wasn’t about any desire to actually love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. After high school, I promptly told God to take a hike and would have done so sooner if I had been allowed to by my preacher folks. But there was something about that family so real that it has stuck with me to this day. (Side note: I caught up with Mr. G twice after high school. In 2004, as I sat down to dinner with he and his wife, he prayed a blessing over me that would have made Abraham proud, and there was a fourth guest at the table that night who was just as real as the three of us – Jesus Christ – and I knew that what I had sensed as “real” in 1980 was still just as real 24 years later.)

After 18 years of atheism, God stopped me in my tracks. Since I had been out of the church scene for so long and had no idea where to start (except that I remembered Mr. G and his Southern Baptist Church), I went to the church of one of the preachers I had been listening to on the radio who had been making sense to me – Parkside Church in Solon, Ohio. That got me off to a great start. In fact the first sermon I heard there after my life of unbelief still drives much of my desire to live as a Christ follower. But that church was over an hour away from home, and there was no way to really connect with other Christians at that distance. So we started looking closer to home.

There were a few visits to churches that were either odd (a foot washing service – something I had never seen before), uncomfortable (don’t know what it was at that church), or flat, we ended up at an Independent Baptist church in Spencer, Ohio, and that’s where I finally realized that whatever other motives I might have had for “accepting Christ” previously in my life – i.e., get out of hell, get mom and dad off my back, trying to turn over a new leaf, etc. – never once was there any desire to actually love God or have him take the first place in my life. That church has been my home and my family for the last 10 years.

Until June. First impression on looking in the phone book when we got one was that there are a LOT of Baptist churches here. The only place I had seen more was in North Carolina where there is literally a Baptist church on every corner (or so it seems ). So with a couple of recommendations and a phone book in hand, I started visiting. I’ll refrain from naming names, but here are my impressions:

Church number one – The people were very friendly. The adult Sunday School teacher was very knowledgeable about the Scriptures and was a very good teacher. The first time I visited, the pastor preached a largely political sermon full of a lot of fundamentalist “hear say” stuff that really turned me off. Because I had determined that I would visit each church at least twice before making a decision, I went back one more time. Again, everyone was very friendly, and the Sunday School teacher gave a great lesson. The pastor started off with a pretty good Gospel message, and then about halfway through got entirely side tracked on the number 7. Now I’m just as capable of going off on tangents as anyone else, and sometimes they’re fun and interesting. But when I go to church, I expect to hear from God – not someone’s half baked ideas about numbers or genealogies (1 Timothy 1:4). I still think A. W. Tozer said it best:

Toward anything like thorough scholarship I make no claim. I am not an authority on any man’s teaching; I have never tried to be. I take my help where I find it and set my heart to graze where the pastures are greenest. Only one stipulation do I make: my teacher must know God, as Carlyle said, “otherwise than by hearsay,” and Christ must be all in all to him. If a man have only correct doctrine to offer me I am sure to slip out at the first intermission to seek the company of someone who has seen for himself how lovely is the face of Him who is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley. Such a man can help me, and no one else can. (A. W. Tozer)

Second church – This was one of my less than spiritual reasons for choosing to visit one church over another. I needed to go to an early service, and they had one. A very nice lady took the time to show me around and introduce me to people. Lots of Bible studies going on. The sermon was okay. One comment by the Associate Pastor left me wondering whether the church was more concerned about “projects” than people.

The next church I visited was one I had pulled out of the phone book and driven by and decided I should visit based on my drive by. After doing a little investigation on the Internet, I found out that 1) they were without a pastor, 2) they were Southern Baptists (I did have another memorable encounter with the Southern Baptists during a visit to Gastonia, NC, in 2007.), 3) the wife of the interim pastor was involved with Beautiful Feet. I had gone to the first Beautiful Feet conference at Cedarville University back in 2006, and so I sent her an email. The day I visited for the first time, the serrmon text was from my “testimony” verses – Psalm 40:1-3, and there was nothing goofy or off base at all. I was clearly hearing from someone who knew God “other than by hearsay”. It was also the day the church determined to call their new pastor. That week a loaf very tasty bread showed up on my door. Yummmm. Back on the Internet to investigate the new pastor. I listened to the sermons he had preached as a candidate at this church, then I found the website of the church he was then at and listened to every sermon he had preached there, along with some of the youth group stuff on the site that he had led. Good stuff. He’ll be arriving in August, so I can finish off my list of churches and see what he’s like in person. (Why the focus on the pastor? Because churches tend to become like their pastor, and so I want to make sure this is someone whose faith I want to follow – Hebrews 13:7.)

Next visit – a small church with a big heart. Good preaching and teaching. It was interesting in this church that the pastor “prayed” my testimony verses as he closed the service. I was talking to a friend about this odd “coincidence” (no such thing), and wondering what – if anything – I was supposed to do with that. She very succinctly said, “Maybe God is just telling you that either church will be okay.” I’ve chewed on that but haven’t come to any firm conclusions.

Next church – I arrived late and a gentleman in the hall showed me where to go for Sunday School. I was sitting there feeling very strange and the more the gentleman leading the class talked, the stranger it got. Finally, he said something along the lines of, “All sin has to be paid for before we leave this earth. You have to pay for your sin before you leave earth.” I waited for the next part – “Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe” – but it never came. I’m sorry. If I couldn’t pay for my own sins before I was saved, what on earth makes this guy think I’m going to pay for them now. Jesus has done all that ever needed to be done in order to pay for the sins of the whole world, and there’s nothing you or I or anyone else can do to add to that. I simply have to rely on Him.

So at this point, I can’t wait to just get out of there. I restrained myself until Sunday School was over, by which time I was beginning to feel a little claustrophobic, and then high tailed it out of there – very grateful that no one wanted to stop me and talk. There was a place just a few minutes away where I knew I would hear from people who believed and preached the Gospel, and so I ended up at the “drive by” church. It was like a big tall glass of fresh water to sit in the worship service with them that day, as it has been every other time I’ve gone there.

For a few weeks I bounced back and forth between the two “testimony” churches. One Sunday I drove by another church that I had put on my list. I got there about 3 minutes early for Sunday School, but something just didn’t seem right. The building was a decent size – probably a couple hundred or so capacity, but there were only 5 cars in the lot. As I was driving in, two couples got out of two of the cars, and they were both seniors. As I continued slowly driving through the parking lot, I wondered what a nice looking church like that was doing with no kids for Sunday School. As I drove out, another elderly couple was driving in. I went to one of the “testimony” churches that day.

And at this point, I really feel like I don’t need to visit anymore churches. The Lord led me to two good ones, and now I just need to settle somewhere. I’ve been going every Sunday for a while now to the SBC church, and I’m pretty sure I know why. My last visit to the other church, I left with the impression that both the pastor and the church were “settled.” I could be wrong about that, but it seemed like everyone knew the routine. Their love for each other and the Lord is very real, but I had a hard time seeing where I might find a place there. On the other hand, at the SBC church, the new preacher, though young, is clearly someone who has heard from and is listening to the Lord. The people love the Lord and each other – this is very obvious from overhearing converesations about different people who are going through trouble of one sort or another. I haven’t heard any condemnation or malicious gossip – just a deep, heartfelt desire to care for those who need cared for. And they are moving! I don’t think it’s just the new pastor either. Things were happening before he got there.

Obstacles? It seems like all of the potential obstacles that I came up with have all been removed, so we’ll see if the Lord wants to send any further confirmation or whether I just jump in the rest of the way with both feet.