Eastward from the MissionReturn to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.
(Zechariah 9:12)
Tag: photography
Value –added
More black and white photos:
Deborah, the girl with the pen, commented on the first Value blog that black and white photos have a starvation feel. I do think they are bare bones kind of images with a “just the facts, ma`am“ kind of attitude.
Christianity is full of colourful variations in worship style but I feel John gave us a bare bones definition of worship right here:
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (1 John 4:13-16)
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Value
Photos: November in black and white
One of my painting instructors used to get on my case about my tendency to allow colour to distract me from paying attention to value. Value, in art, is the arrangement of dark and light that gives depth and dimension to an image. She suggested I photocopy a painting or take a photo of it and remove all the colour on Photoshop to get down to basic values.
I’m enjoying the exercise of seeing things sans colour. I’m learning to see differently, to pay attention to texture, highlight and shadow.
November is a month that seems relatively colourless to me after the brilliant summer and autumn seasons. It’s so…so… ordinary.
Our Thanksgiving celebrations take place in early October in Canada when travel is usually easier, so there are no significant holidays until Christmas and ski season hasn’t started yet. The days tend to be overcast and the sun is early to bed and late to rise. It’s a time for home maintenance and personal maintenance. It’s a season for staying inside.
I find this season of black and white values a good time to assess personal values. When the distractions fade in our lives what are the values we hold dear? Where is the source of light? Where does the darkness linger? Is there depth and dimension in our spiritual lives when life is just ordinary?
When it’s all been said and done what does it all come down to? What do I truly value? I am reminded of the first question in the shorter Westminster Confession, which we taught our children as they jumped on the bed in their jammies at the end of the day.
What is the chief purpose of man?
Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.
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I Was Nominated for an Award! or How to Encourage the Entire World in Seven Steps
Photo: Bouquet
When I received my first blogging award nomination my reaction was kind of like this –if you can imagine a very plump middle age woman in the place of this talented child. Well, perhaps this is not the best visual, but still:
I didn’t post it right away because I was just so humble (ahem) and also because I couldn’t figure out how to get the pasty link thing to work. So I dropped it to contemplate the gravity of the honour. Then there were some more very flattering nominations, which I truly appreciated.
Then I read the rules on some of them. Pass the award on to 15 other bloggers? As I often say to my husband, I said, “Husband, I am an English major. You do the math.” So he did. He figured that if everyone receiving an award passed that award on to 15 other people the very next day and they did the same, in little more than a week we could pretty much encourage the entire world –at least several billion of them.
This relates to my post On Being a Descendent of Royalty. Just because the designers of rules for receiving blogging awards were exceedingly generous doesn’t mean that they are not of value and that some kind people out there took the time to read my blog and nominate me for an award. I am truly grateful. I thank you. I am honoured.
So to catch up on some inexcusably overdue acknowledgements I would like to thank the following bloggers for their generosity and kind words:
Admin at Pure Gory
Deborah at “Ye shall know me by my fruits”
Victoria at Made for Victory
Melody at Meanwhile Melody Muses
Gracie at Frames and Focus
I highly recommend their sites.
Now, the obligatory seven things about myself list:
1. When I was in grade three I rode my imaginary horse, Ginger, home from school every day. The neighbours thought I was seriously gimped.
2. I’m usually in the process of reading at least six books at the same time and I often start in the middle.
3. I can’t dance or remember the 7 times table, but I always have music in my head. It can be annoying.
4. Between my husband, my children and their spouses and myself we have about 49 1/2 years of university education (so far). Some of it is paid for. I’ve done umpteen year’s worth of courses in music, education, theology, art, and English, but I don’t have a degree.
5. My parents were told I was dead. Mom had a caesarean section to deliver a stillborn, but some friends gathered all night to pray for this young couple and their baby. God must have heard, because I am here. Still.
6. I am seriously in love with Jesus Christ. So is my husband. It’s a magnificent threesome.
7. I published my first poetry at 12, sang in my first opera at 14, performed in a nightclub when I was too young to get in, dated a politician when I was too young to vote, learned to fly a kite at 45, went through adolescent rebellion at 39 and started splashing right through the middle of puddles at 55. It’s not just that I have a tendency to be ahead of the curve or behind the curve — the curve and I have never met.
The point of awards is, I think, to bring attention to worthwhile blogs, so rather than contribute to the devaluation of awards I choose to bypass the whole system and get to the point of saying check out these blogs. I shall try to do this on a more regular basis. The following bloggers may consider themselves winners of Charis’ very own first I LIKE YOU award (if I could figure out how to make an icon I would):
Check out these blogs:
(Edited to add: after 25 edits on this post I think this is as good as it’s going to get. Click on the URL and not the name of the blog and you should get there. sigh.)
Admin at Pure Glory http://pureglory.net –prophets Gabriel and Hazel bring strong words of encouragement
Deborah at Ye Shall Know Me by My Fruits http://girlwiththepen1118.wordpress.com/ incredibly talented poet who writes the most evocative sensuous real stuff. She really should be famous. Seriously.
Victoria at Made for Victory– http://madeforvictory.com/an over-comer of epic proportion
Melody at Meanwhile Melody Muses– http://melodylowes.com/ fellow lover of words, flowers and hope who is not afraid to pump up the colour
Gracie at Frames and Focus–http://graciebinoya.com/ a sensitive, talented photographer with a gift of holy discontent that keeps her striving to be even better
And some others that have really touched my heart:
Quilla at Ruach333 http://ruach333.wordpress.com/–photography and poetry from a quiet but deep, deep man of faith
Disciple Gideon at Disciple Gideon http://disciplegideon.wordpress.com/ -an honest humble man with a listening heart and a gift for being profound
Janelle at My Men and Me http://mymenandme.wordpress.com–a pure soul who loves the Lord, loves her family, loves her farm, and loves her readers
Stephanie at The Potter’s Hand – http://thepottershand2011.com -a worshipping Singaporean who sees the glory of God all around her and captures it with her camera
Trina and Micheline at Whimsical Publishing http://whimsicalpublishingblog.wordpress.com–a writer of children’s books and an illustrator/artist/photographer team who are much too lively and fun to stay in a box
Mirjam at Mirjam Aldolphi Photography http://mirisphotos.org -in Ukraine -a woman whose love for needy children needs no translation
There are other blogs I enjoy, of course. I’m just starting in order of when I first started reading them. If I forgot an award, please remind me, so I can make an excuse, and then acknowledge it.
Blessings on you all. You have enriched my life!!
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On Being a Descendent of Royalty
This was unexpected.
In the process of trying to reduce 83 years of photographic memories onto tiny cards for a digital frame, I discovered I am the descendent of kings and queens.
My father asked me to add names to the hundreds of family photos I scanned for him, since his failing memory was the main reason for him to leave his house and move into a senior’s Lodge. He conceded that it was time to voluntarily give up some his independence, but not at the expense of memories. Trying to condense the contents of a house belonging to a man who survived the Great Depression to a collection that would fit into two small rooms was a daunting task.
The tendency to carry a camera around with me all the time is an inherited one, so I spent many, many hours sorting and labelling old photos. The most precious went into albums, the rest I squeezed onto miraculously tiny memory cards.
Grandpa upon arrival in the west,with older brother and friend (with unusual taste in reading material)One evening, I impulsively googled Dad’s grandmother’s name to see if I could find a birthplace for her. Her story is a fascinating one. As a young girl she escaped virtual slavery in a foster home in New York and was found wandering in the woods in Ontario by First Nations people. They took her into their tribe and raised her. Later she married a Scottish trapper and raised ten children thirty miles from the nearest road in the area now known as Algonquin National Park. I didn’t expect to find much, but what I discovered about her family line shocked me.
Her name showed up on an ancestry site, as did her father’s and his father’s and his father’s right back to the first Puritans to arrive in Massachusetts. This same family had three daughters found guilty of being witches in the Salem witch trials. When I continued to click on the names of ancestors the trail led me back through generations of aristocratic families to William the Conqueror’s cousin, Geoff, who apparently came along for the ride when Bill decided to take over England. I clicked on Geoff’s Dad and the page lit up with heraldic signs and listed Kings and Queens of every country in Europe.
By three a.m. I learned I had sprung from the loins of some pretty powerful people including Charlemagne himself.
I was so amazed at this finding that I went on Facebook to gloat. Every time I made another connection to a famous person I posted –the patron saint of beer, a Jewish banker, a sheriff of Nottingham, a Roman proconsul….
Then I ran across an article by a mathematician. He said he traced his family lines back to Charlemagne four different ways and began to wonder what the chances were than any European was descended from The Holy Roman Emperor. He worked out that the odds were one in 17 million of not being a descendant of any one person living in that time, including Charlemagne himself.
I felt deflated and embarrassed that I had not considered how many great grandparents one would have going back that far. It turns out to be a much greater number than the estimated population of the entire continent.
But then I got to thinking. Does this mean I am not the descendant of royalty? Well, actually no; it pretty much confirms that I am. I’m just upset that my position is not unique and that most of the people I know are also of royal blood.
Recently a long lost cousin contacted me with information he has discovered about our mutual great grandfather’s line. He broke through the secrecy barrier when he learned that our first ancestor to land in Canada was the bastard son of a member of a noble house, the descendant of an Earl –and the Prince of Wales and the Chancellor of England and propertied people going back through William the Conqueror all the way back to guess who? Charlemagne!
I haven’t the heart to explain the math to him. There is comfort amid this daily eking out a living stuff, to know that had King Edward or Prince Owain, or the 10th Earl of Oxford stayed out shooting quail (or each other) one day longer, or if Queen Matilda, or one of Charlemagne’s wives had feigned a headache that night we would not be here.
I also discovered some Jewish ancestors and since my mother’s parents came from a part of the world where east meets west and north meets south (my maternal grandfather spoke several languages including Turkish), and my husband is racially mixed, whole other branches probably reach out to the rest of the world for our children. (Although getting past the secrecy barrier there is more difficult.)
The big C Church is like this. 1 Peter 2:9 says “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
Those of us belonging to the household of faith can feel like merely one of millions of princes and princesses sometimes, yet in God’s eyes we are all royalty and each a divinely planned miracle. He is infinitely wealthy and infinitely powerful. He does not limit inheritance to the eldest son, in fact history proves he likes to choose younger children and “illegitimate” offspring for special favour, just because he can.
I’m a much-loved child of the King. I am who I am, and I am blessed.
And so are you.
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From water to ice
Photo: Lundbreck FallsI stopped at the Falls today.
Yup. It’s cold.
Change is upon us.
Water to ice
On the road to the FallsShare this:
Cattle Country
Photo: Near High River, Alberta
He gives to the beasts their food,
and to the young ravens that cry.
His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his pleasure in the legs of a man,
but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him,
in those who hope in his steadfast love.
Psalm 147
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Hard hearted at Meribah
Photo: locked up
It’s so easy for tender-hearted people to become the most hard-hearted people around. (Sermon to self alert.)
I have a confession (and this relates to the (B)log in My Eye Blog). One of the things that fires up my ire to bonfire level is when other people turn away from suffering and overlook the needs of the oppressed. I call them hard-hearted (and a lot of other not nice words.) It is totally beyond my comprehension how any civilized society can withhold affordable healthcare from those who would like to be hard-working folk, or turn away genuine refugees, or feast in the presence of the starving, or provide drugs and facilities for terminating the most vulnerable among us. When I hear of anyone being sexually abused or exploited I could march my 5 foot 2 and ¾ inch granny self right in that place and bless the perpetrator with a brick to the gonads –and if anyone gets in my way, they can expect a few bricks to the face themselves. I am outraged that….that…that…ooooh…don’t get me started. I want to yell, “Don’t just sit there. DO SOMETHING!!!”
This week I kept running into the phrase “Do not harden your heart” too many times to ignore, so I asked God, “What you talkin’ about? Me? I don’t think so, cuz I’m the one who gets into trouble for shooting off my mouth and meddling when it comes to standing up for the underdog.”
The other words that keep showing up are “Meribah” and “Pisgah” Now that’s just weird. Who wakes up in the middle of the night muttering, “Pisgah!” before they even slam a toe into a chair leg?
So I’ve been meditating on the verses about hardening the heart and what happened at Meribah and Pisgah. I believe this is what Abba wanted me to grasp. (Meditating is a bit like worrying -but with useful subject matter.) Hardening my heart is not about turning a blind eye to suffering. Hardening my heart is about not having the faith to believe that God has a better solution than I do.
Is the Lord among us or not?
And he called the name of the place Massah [testing] and Meribah [quarrelling], because of the quarrelling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exodus 17:7)
Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. (Psalm 95:8)
This story is referred to again in the third and fourth chapters of Hebrews which talk about entering into his rest.
Take care, lest there be in any of you an evil unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (3:12,13)
The test at Meribah was a big one. It was about unbelief. (Quarrelling can be a symptom of unbelief.) Even the great leader, Moses, was caught up in unbelief and felt he had to go beyond God’s instructions and do something more attention-grabbing on his own. He didn’t simply speak to the rock like God said. (I picture Scottie in that Star Trek movie saying “Computer? Computer!’” as Moe says, “Rock? Rock! ”) Obeying only what Yhwh said to do was such a big deal, that failing the test at Meribah kept Moses out of the Promised Land. He only got to see it from Pisgah, where he summed up his final warnings to the people not to forget what the Lord had done.
The other time the term “hard hearted” comes up is when Jesus is with the disciples. They had just come back all high from a short-term missions trip where they cast out demons and healed the sick. They amazed themselves. They were actually seeing and doing the stuff! It hit the media. Even Herod heard about it. Jesus advised them to come away by themselves for a while. (Oh boy. How many people who have seen God work through them would be wise to take this advice and get away from the spotlight for a while before it all goes to their heads or they start doing or saying stupid things from fatigue?)
When the crowds followed them and ran ahead Jesus was moved with compassion. The disciples were moved with logistics and problem-solving issues and pseudo-compassion combined with a little ego. Their solution was to send the folks to the villages (and foist the problem onto local officials. Can you see the mayor of Punkiedoodle Corners panicking as 5000+ people bear down on Faye’s Diner and Donairs and the Esso station’s one septic tank?)
Jesus told his guys, “You feed them.”
My honest response to a situation like that probably would have been, “Whaaaat ??????”
I think Jesus knew they didn’t have a clue, so he did the logistics thing for them and set up the people in groups which could be easily counted . He even divided the lunch into bits for each of them to serve to the people. But here’s the cool part. Jesus did not multiply the food. He gave each of them something like 2/5th of a bun and 1/6th of a fish, and sent them off to their assigned mob with a grin on his face, I’m sure. The miracle happened as the guys acted in faith –in their own baskets, or whatever they used to pass the food around in.
So they were all fed and had leftovers –but you know the story.
In the next scene the guys are out in a boat in a wind that is blowing the wrong way, getting nowhere fast. Jesus strolls by on the water, tells them to take heart, gets in the boat and the wind stops. (My granddaughter has great insight into another telling of the story , which I blogged about in Red Button, Yellow Button.)
This is what the scripture says: And they were utterly astounded for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.
In Chapter 8 of Mark the lesson on how to feed lots of company is repeated for the remedial miracles class. A little later they are on about lack of bread again. (It is so comforting to me to know that even the people who were with Jesus day and night could be as dense as I am sometimes.) He said to them, “Do you not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? Do you not yet understand?”
OK. So hardening of the heart is about forgetting the things that God has done in our lives. Hardening of the heart is about thinking we have to come up with our own solutions sans the power of God. Hardening our hearts is acting like ungrateful victims who do not realize the authority which Christ has given us to work with him and do the stuff. In this same conversation Jesus tells the guys, “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and beware the leaven of Herod.”
Pharisees tried to solve societal problems with their limited understanding of earning God’s favour through their own strict adherence to rules and regulations. Herod relied on political solutions by winning the approval of the people around him.
Note well, oh my soul.
Why now? Why is God talking to me about hardening the heart?
Have you ever noticed that when God teaches you something he follows up the lesson with a homework assignment? Have you noticed when you have a promise from God that the opposite circumstances show up?
My friends and I have been praying about unity in the church for a while. When we talk about unity, people often come up with ideas for inter-church music celebrations or rallies and picnics in the park. When we pray about it, it seems like all hell breaks loose. Our town is a mess of schisms and division and dwindling church attendance right now. Why should this be a surprise?
One night we were praying about an important board meeting for an organization. I was praying that things would go smoothly when my friend said, “Stop. I think we are to pray simply that God has his way.” So we did. Afterward we heard from a board member that it was the worst, most upsetting, unloving, unchristian meeting he had ever attended. Unforgiveness and wounds which had been festering for years under superficial healing of polite niceness split open and all manner of ugliness spilled out. The moderator was in tears at his lack of control over the meeting.
The intercessors were shocked, but knew that God answered the prayers for unity. It has taken months, but now the group is working on some root problems, forgiving, and dealing with real issues.
We’ve seen this pattern over and over.
In the past couple of days I have read some very discouraging posts on social media about the American election. I have die-hard friends with strong political ideals on both sides (I wonder if I ever combined them in one room if we could replace a few nuclear power stations). Politics a source of quarrelling? Duh.
I’ve seen many, even some with high-profile ministries, bewailing the fact that their country is now officially doomed (in their eyes). It’s like they are grumbling, “There is no water in Meribah!! All hope is gone. We will die in this moral wilderness! This country has sinned too much! (leaven of Pharisees) What if we elect the wrong leader?! (leaven of Herod) God is going to abandon us! Aaaaaaaargh!” (The fact that a lot of us don’t live there or even had a vote seems to be lost in the ash-flinging. We get caught up in it too.)
But wait. I think get it, Lord! I hear you!
People, we are at Meribah in our history in the western Church. He has brought us here for a reason.
Seriously, is the Lord among us, or not? Are we dependent on religious “righter-than-thou” solutions and forcing people who have no comprehension of a loving heavenly Father into religious rule-minding to try to alleviate suffering? Do we really think that by voting the “right “politician in place (or let’s be honest –for some voting the “wrong” one out) that we will again be prosperous and highly favoured?
Is God’s hand so wimpy that he cannot save us when we call out to him?
We need to drop the grumbling and complaining and the slick showmanship, and simply do what he asks whether it is talking to a rock or daring to feed a crowd of hungry people with a tiny piece of bun and a bit of fish. We need to exhort each other daily (including overseers in the church) not to be taken in by deceitfulness and the sin of unbelief.
God is God, and I’m not.
He will provide. We have a promise. In God we trust.
When we remember our past with God, we remember our future.
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Remembering the Future II
And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight
The sky be rolled back like a scroll
(From “It is Well with My Soul”)
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Remembering the Future
I was looking forward to this journey to my Father’s house on the Alberta side of the Rockies. Usually the mountain views are stunning, but instead I drove through fog for nearly four hours. I could see very little beyond the verge by the highway most of the time. Sometimes the fog would lift for a moment only to re-form and descend again. I stopped near some cabins, closed for the season, to take a break from the tension of driving in poor visibility and found a beautiful stream. When I descended the Kootenay Parkway the clouds vanished.
Charis: Subject to Change 