We've all seen it. Technology is moving faster than it has ever moved. Once we get the iphone 3G, it's already soon to be outdated and we have to upgrade to the 4G. (Now the 5G is coming.) The Myspace rage is a thing of the past. Facebook took it's place, then twitter arose, and some manage both at the same time and call it "Twitface". (Oh, and then if you still do myspace as well, you can say "MyTwitFace".) When just a few years ago we stared at the computer screen waiting on dial up internet, now we check emails from our phones. We can talk face-to-face with people from all over the globe using Skype. (A personal example is that my church a while back watched our pastor speak to us all the way from Israel on a Sunday morning by way of Skype on the big screen during the service...) We also now have talking cars, and Ford is working on cars that can tell the driver when his/her allergies may flare up. (Ha what?!) Just last century, a man who bought a new Ford vehicle when it was just invented thought he was awesome stuff driving up to pick up his lady going about 20 miles an hour. People freaked out when the concept of TV came out and little people seemed trapped in a box; now talk of holograms becoming more available is on the rise. ("Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi", sorry if that was nerdy. Had to do it.)
Amazing. Our world is now made up of wires, cameras, tracking devices, airplanes, cars that talk to you and tell you how healthy you are, and holograms when just a few years ago, the concept of a text message seemed unbelievable.... So what does it mean? That man is getting smarter? Well, yeah, but more importantly, in a world changing so fast and furiously, is an old book like the Bible able to be used beyond giving words of advice and leading us to God? For sure it is, and it even tells us this would all happen.
It states in Daniel 12:4 that in the last days "...Many will go back and forth, and knowledge will increase." We all can see that knowledge has increased, for sure. It's moving extremely fast. And are we traveling more? We can answer yes, for certain. Remember that old Ford car that I mentioned before? Now we have talking cars, we have airplanes, and there are astronauts that go into outer space.
We're in the last days, and it's obvious if we look around us and compare it to what was written in the Bible. About the return of Jesus---can we predict the hour? No, as it states that only God knows, yet we can look at clues that Jesus is close to returning. The Word of God is still relevant, and prophesies that were written way before our time are still mapping out today. For me, that makes my faith even more compelling to live out and believe. The Author of all is still at it, and we are Living the Unfinished Story.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Desires Of Our Hearts: What To Do With Them, Part 2
In 1577, my favorite poem ever was written. It was beautifully crafted from a heart's cry that echoes into this day. Whenever I read these words, my own heart pumps in agreement. I desire to live this way... What should we do with dreams and desires of our hearts? I think this author boldly wrote the answer long ago.
"Disturb us, Lord,
When we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
With the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life
We have ceased our dreams of eternity,
And in our efforts to build a new earth
We have allowed our vision
Of the new heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where loosing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love."
~Attributed to Sir Francis Drake, 1577
Dream. Live. Dare. Go boldly to answer God's calling. Stay thirsty for Him... To do without is like a ship in a sea of doldrums.
"Disturb us, Lord,
When we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
With the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life
We have ceased our dreams of eternity,
And in our efforts to build a new earth
We have allowed our vision
Of the new heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where loosing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love."
~Attributed to Sir Francis Drake, 1577
Dream. Live. Dare. Go boldly to answer God's calling. Stay thirsty for Him... To do without is like a ship in a sea of doldrums.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Dance And The Supermoon
Photography by Vince Wallace of Silver Hill Images. (www.silverhillimages.com)
Dancer: Lindsey Adare Fisher
Art and nature can work wonderfully well together. In this case, it was when the Perigee Moon was boasting it's full and large face across the night on March 18 & 19, and my friend Vince Wallace (photographer of Silver Hill Images) and I were working on an artistic collaboration. He wanted to capture the moon it its closeness to the earth while having a dancer leaping underneath its brilliance. What you can see below is what we came up with while the moon was rising. (The moon in this first one is obviously made bigger by photoshop.)
We had faced some challenges to make these happen... 1.) We were using a field with a no trespassing sign on it. (That was Vince's idea, not mine.) 2.) We didn't know exactly which direction the moon would rise, so he set up his cameras and lights by guesswork. 3.) Then when we were about to go, the portable battery for his lights blew! We had no lights... for a night photoshoot in an open field way out in the country... How was this going to work?! What happened next was a bit comical if one could see. I will post part of a note that Vince wrote so he can explain what happened in his words, since I'm not excellently good at explaining photography/tech stuff... (That's another reason I dance!)
"Pacing frantically back and forth, I came up with PLAN B. I would use my Canon 580EX flash off-camera to light Lindsey. Brilliant! Except that I had no remote trigger for the 580EX – so here’s how it would go down: I would put the camera on 10 sec. self-timer. Then I would fire the shutter, sprint 50 yards to Lindsey while she was counting down. Fire the flash manually pointed directly at her at the split-second apex of her jump, and run back to check the image, make any mental adjustments to my flash position, fire the next shutter, and sprint another 50 yards to do it all again.... A half hour later, we were thanking God neither of us had twisted ankles or herniated discs, and that we’d had the privilege of doing something very few have done – dancing with the Perigree Super Moon."
Dancer: Lindsey Adare Fisher
Art and nature can work wonderfully well together. In this case, it was when the Perigee Moon was boasting it's full and large face across the night on March 18 & 19, and my friend Vince Wallace (photographer of Silver Hill Images) and I were working on an artistic collaboration. He wanted to capture the moon it its closeness to the earth while having a dancer leaping underneath its brilliance. What you can see below is what we came up with while the moon was rising. (The moon in this first one is obviously made bigger by photoshop.)
We had faced some challenges to make these happen... 1.) We were using a field with a no trespassing sign on it. (That was Vince's idea, not mine.) 2.) We didn't know exactly which direction the moon would rise, so he set up his cameras and lights by guesswork. 3.) Then when we were about to go, the portable battery for his lights blew! We had no lights... for a night photoshoot in an open field way out in the country... How was this going to work?! What happened next was a bit comical if one could see. I will post part of a note that Vince wrote so he can explain what happened in his words, since I'm not excellently good at explaining photography/tech stuff... (That's another reason I dance!)
"Pacing frantically back and forth, I came up with PLAN B. I would use my Canon 580EX flash off-camera to light Lindsey. Brilliant! Except that I had no remote trigger for the 580EX – so here’s how it would go down: I would put the camera on 10 sec. self-timer. Then I would fire the shutter, sprint 50 yards to Lindsey while she was counting down. Fire the flash manually pointed directly at her at the split-second apex of her jump, and run back to check the image, make any mental adjustments to my flash position, fire the next shutter, and sprint another 50 yards to do it all again.... A half hour later, we were thanking God neither of us had twisted ankles or herniated discs, and that we’d had the privilege of doing something very few have done – dancing with the Perigree Super Moon."
Monday, May 9, 2011
Desires of Our Hearts: What To Do With Them?
"The only fatal error is to pretend that we have found the life we prize. To mistake the water hole for the sea. To settle for the same old thing." ~John Eldridge from Journey to Desire
I have been going through Journey to Desire by John Eldridge. In the book, he deals with what to do with the desires of our hearts in our lives. Do we bury dreams or chase them? Since we live in a fallen world, our dreams are harder to completely obtain, and many times we do without reaching our fullest dreams. Our hearts ache and yearn for something, and that something is called more. We were created for wholeness but since The Fall when we lost Eden, we cannot reach that wholeness here on earth. Yet our God as He loves us still beckons us to push for our goals, to reach for the desires of our hearts while being in His will.
In the book, Eldridge asks over and over again "Do we dare?"... In a life that seems to continuously disappoint us when our dreams aren't reached, how do we cope? Let's face it: people let us down. We get injured. A relationship is broken off. Death happens. We don't get the job... When we're on the road to chasing dreams but obstacles keep standing in the way or slowing us down, how do we handle ourselves? Do we still dare to dream? Do we dare to trust and chase? Do we dare keep our hearts alive?
Personally, I've had dreams that have been knocked down and shaken, and it's a dare to keep dreams alive when the outcome isn't certain. It's a dare to walk the unknown journey.
To kill desire and to cease dreaming is like killing our hearts, which is not what our God wants for us. He is a passionate God who created us to live out passionate lives. He created us to desire wholeness, which is part of the beauty of His saving love, as we can never fully attain that wholeness without being with Him... We will never gain that 100% wholeness here on this earth since it is a fallen world. Greater things are coming when we're face to face with our Lord, which gives us hope. Yet here on this earth in this time, we must still hold on to dreams.
Eldridge posts something by Langston Hughes within the book's pages:
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go,
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. ("Dreams")
Keep your heart alive. Allow yourself the boldness to chase after the desires of your heart. Dare to dream.... and read Journey to Desire by John Eldridge. :)
I have been going through Journey to Desire by John Eldridge. In the book, he deals with what to do with the desires of our hearts in our lives. Do we bury dreams or chase them? Since we live in a fallen world, our dreams are harder to completely obtain, and many times we do without reaching our fullest dreams. Our hearts ache and yearn for something, and that something is called more. We were created for wholeness but since The Fall when we lost Eden, we cannot reach that wholeness here on earth. Yet our God as He loves us still beckons us to push for our goals, to reach for the desires of our hearts while being in His will.
In the book, Eldridge asks over and over again "Do we dare?"... In a life that seems to continuously disappoint us when our dreams aren't reached, how do we cope? Let's face it: people let us down. We get injured. A relationship is broken off. Death happens. We don't get the job... When we're on the road to chasing dreams but obstacles keep standing in the way or slowing us down, how do we handle ourselves? Do we still dare to dream? Do we dare to trust and chase? Do we dare keep our hearts alive?
Personally, I've had dreams that have been knocked down and shaken, and it's a dare to keep dreams alive when the outcome isn't certain. It's a dare to walk the unknown journey.
To kill desire and to cease dreaming is like killing our hearts, which is not what our God wants for us. He is a passionate God who created us to live out passionate lives. He created us to desire wholeness, which is part of the beauty of His saving love, as we can never fully attain that wholeness without being with Him... We will never gain that 100% wholeness here on this earth since it is a fallen world. Greater things are coming when we're face to face with our Lord, which gives us hope. Yet here on this earth in this time, we must still hold on to dreams.
Eldridge posts something by Langston Hughes within the book's pages:
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go,
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. ("Dreams")
Keep your heart alive. Allow yourself the boldness to chase after the desires of your heart. Dare to dream.... and read Journey to Desire by John Eldridge. :)
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