November 5 - 7

More pictures!  Hooray!

Here we have (1) out for breakfast at Wild Mountain Cafe, (2) the puzzle that kept me company during the election mayhem, and (3) worship rehearsal at Harbor Church.  These were all sort of tests of various lighting, etc.  I think I'm getting the hang of this manual focus thing!

November 4

I finally got out the advanced manual for my camera, and learned how to use the manual mode.  So, I was playing around with different shutter speeds and apertures and depths of field and all these others words I'm trying to keep straight.  On my old camera, I could get by without knowing actual terms for things - I could just mess with settings until the picture looked how I wanted it to.  Now...there's a little more work.

Anyway - here's my best shot of the night.  This is a sari from Malaysia, that we currently use to cover a table in the bedroom.

Nov. 3

Today was the Fall Festival!  Here's a shot I got of a lot of fun being had in the bouncy house.  That thing was a huge hit!

To be honest...I'm not sure what I did to get this picture.  But - I love it!  I'm still learning, right?

Nov. 2

This one was taken in preparation for our Fall Festival at Harbor Church.  I helped put together some goodie bags for the kiddos to take home, and got to have some fun with fall-themed stickers.  This little guy was one of my favorites.

Also - it gave me a chance to play with my macro setting.  I can't figure out how to manually choose where the focus goes yet...but my camera did a pretty good job of figuring it out on its own. 

time to learn (Nov. 1)

I got a new camera for my birthday this year, and I've been looking for excuses to actually learn the ins and outs of this new toy.  So - each day for the next little while (I haven't decided how long) I'll take at least one picture, probably playing with some feature of my camera.

So - you're invited to follow along!

Here's Nov. 1:

I hereby promise that not every photo will be of my dog.  But...I didn't take my camera with me anywhere this day, and he was being funny - so I went with it.

This was on "Creative Auto" - which allows me to select things like blurry backgrounds and the like, while adjusting the focus automatically.  So far, I'm a fan.  :)

redheads

Here's something I learned about myself yesterday:

"How can you tell if someone's a natural redhead? Operate on 'em! On average, redheads require 20 percent more general anesthesia than non-gingers before going under the knife. Researchers believe that the same recessive gene that causes red hair and fairer skin also affects the brain's pain receptors, making numbing agents such as Novocaine less effective. And because fillings and root canals also involve anesthesia, redheads are twice as likely as others to avoid dental care. For them, a visit to the dentist really is more painful."

from Mental Floss, May-June 2011, p. 14.

Worship that Forms Disciples

I was recently asked to write something for the Brehm Center website at Fuller Seminary, and this is what I submitted. So, here are some of my thoughts on worship:

“O God, grant that what we sing with our lips we may know with our hearts

And what we know with our hearts, we may show forth in our lives.

Amen.”

This prayer decorates the front of my binder of worship music, collected from my leading and singing at a variety of places. I think it’s a fitting place, for all the songs in that binder have served and likely will serve again as words of worship for the body of Christ, and these words are important.

Worship forms and transforms the worshipper. The songs that we sing, the scriptures we read, and the rituals we enact in our worship inform us, teach us, solidify us in our beliefs. The things we do and say in worship find a way into our hearts and, ultimately, begin to shape how we see God, how we see ourselves as children of God, and how we see our relationship to the church and the world.

So, the question is this: to what is our worship forming us? Time and time again, Scripture calls us to a kind of worship that forms us not only in our knowledge of God but our lives as disciples of God. Jesus himself summarized the life of the disciple, saying “The first [commandment] is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31) We are called to know God and to love God with all that we are, but it does not stop there - we are called to show this love for God in the way we love those around us.

In other words, true, God-glorifying worship forms us, not only as a people who know and love the Lord but who live a life of love for those around us. Worship forms us not simply as believers, but as faithful disciples to the One who is worthy of praise, so that:

“...what we sing with our lips we may know with our hearts

And what we know with our hearts, we may show forth in our lives.

Amen.”

I owe much of this thought to the works of John Witvliet (Director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship), Paul Ryan (Associate Chaplain for Worship at Calvin College), and the book The Dangerous Act of Worship by Mark Labberton.