I’m copping out. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are several thousand words that I don’t have the brain power to write, at the moment, after spending this week chasing, helping, entertaining, and laughing with three toddlers, aged 1.5, 3, and 4. Yeah, they raise the decibel level a few notches around here, but so what? It’s a happy, crazy, joyous noise and I’m loving it.
Coram Deo!
Eric Rauch’s latest article about killing the sacred cow of the modern definition of luv was excellent in pointing out that love does not depend on our variating, fickle emotions — the Bible commands us to love God, and the second commandment is like unto it, which is to love our neighbors as ourselves, regardless of our emotions, environment, or situation.
Here’s an excerpt from Eric Rauch’s article The Sacred Cow of God’s Love:
Praise be to God that His love is not conditioned on emotions, but on the faithfulness of Christ. If we are “in Christ,” we are unconditionally loved by the Father, but being “in Christ” is the condition of God’s love. Salvation is an unconditional gift as a result of God’s love being directed toward us. Salvation is not conditional, as some commenters put it; salvation from God’s wrath is a direct consequence of being loved by Him. Making the claim that God’s love is unconditional but that it is actually salvation which is conditional only changes the words being used. This wordplay is similar to when certain evolutionists explain away the impossibility of abiogenesis—life coming from non-life—on earth, by claiming that life was seeded here by aliens. The problem of the scientific impossibility of abiogenesis still remains, but they push it out into space and hope that no one will notice. We are only forced into these types of word games when we begin with a faulty premise.
We must be careful to not make the Bible say what we want it to say. Although I am genuinely thankful to those of you who recommended that I read the Bible to straighten my faulty views out, I can only offer my assurance that I have read it. I would hasten to add that “read the Bible” is pretty dangerous advice. I only recommend reading the Bible to those that are willing to abandon a lifetime of preconceived and misguided notions about the character of God. Scripture changes us; we cannot change the Scripture to suit our own preferences. Although it is sometimes difficult to get our minds around biblical truths, we shouldn’t seek to redefine them. Sacred cows are hard to kill, but they sure make for tasty steaks once they’re dead.
Here are some of my favorite shots from Levi and Alyssa’s engagement session last Sunday. Levi is a firefighter at the local fire station, so we commandeered the engine for 20 minutes to take some shots next to bright, fall-colored trees. An old barn and hilltop provided the other settings.
Coram Deo!
They’s something kindo’ harty like about the atmusfere, when the heat of summer’s over, and the coolin’ fall is here. Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees, and the mumble of the hummin’ birds and the buzzin’ of the bees. But the air’s so appertizin; and the landscape through the haze of a crisp and sunny morning of the early autumn days is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock — when the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
From childhood’s hour I have not been as others were — I have not seen as other saw, I could not bring my passions from a common spring. From the same source I have not taken my sorrow; I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone, and all I ever lov’d, I lov’d alone. From the torrent, or from the fountain. from the red cliff of the mountain; from the sun that ’round me roll’d in its autumn the tint of gold.
Laden Autumn here I stand
Worn of heart, and weak of hand:
Nought but rest seems good to me,
Speak the word that sets me free.
When the Frost is on the Punkin.
Coram Deo~
These things I command you, that you love one another. — John 15:17
The clock reads 3:30 a.m. Hmm, this beginning line sounds familiar, like I just used it recently. Oh, wait, I did. 
My point still stands. The clock reads 3:30 a.m. Why then art thou awake, O Sleeper, at this hour?
The decrees of God, and His commanding, loving, providential hands can pierce the foggiest sleeping veil of the morning hours, and are worked out regardless of men’s frail dreams, and tenacious clinging to life… the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. And no one can stop babies from coming at 3:30 a.m. in the morning, if the Lord wills it.
The basic question as we groggily wake and stand with sleep-muddled heads is: How do we fit awkwardly into the pattern of this grand design? God gives us the summons to be His Kingdom workers as the hands and feet of the body of Christ; and the call is to community — imperfect, wearying, and fragmented as it may be week to week, and even at the times we feel most like polydactyls. 
But our love is not love if it fluctuates with our fickle feelings, and our commitment is not a concrete commitment if we refuse to rise at 3:30 a.m. for those fellow members of Christ’s body who are in need.
Love one another. Like a little child who discovers a garnet or crystal that sparkles brightly in their grasp, once I grasped for the first time a basic theological principle when I was younger, it delighted me; fresh and clear as it was to me, I treasured it, talking about it with my parents, and seeing its golden thread running through verse after verse on the pages of my Bible. But, as can easily happen, the golden thread started to fade after I grew a little older. “Love one another?” How rudimentary. How mundane. How unsophisticated. That’s so elementary and basic, I don’t need to review that! Besides “love” is so squishy and touchy-feely, how could I possibly feel that way all the time about just anybody, especially those frustrating brothers and sisters, and exasperating people at church? This betrayed (and betrays ever yet) a creeping misconception of my view of love; for love is not anchored to feelings, though feelings may follow love, and through enduring we may “grow fond of old so-and-so.” But our loving is tested through the washing of wounds, the serving of bread, and the cleaning of floors, time after time after time; the beauty of God will shine through even the mundane things and people as we joyfully embrace our calling.
It’s easy to seek to love those outside of our circumference of family and friends, because without the close contact and rubbing of elbows no one else can as easily see our own spots and wrinkles, short temper, and capricious feelings for those who are hurting, suffering, or just plain, old exasperating. And it’s easy to lose that sense of commitment, fervent as it may have been in the beginning, to those same old faces at home and at church. A truly ideal situation would be one where we were able to surround ourselves by people who think and act just like us, right? C.S. Lewis addressed this, however, in the following quote:
The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop. The truly wide taste in humanity will similarly find something to appreciate in the cross-section of humanity whom one has to meet every day. In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who “happen to be there.” Made for use? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.
I’ve learned to a degree as I’ve grown older, that it is through loving, sharing, and using these “jewels” that they shine more brightly — if we set them, and leave them to be displayed in our pride as wall hangings and books, then they grow dull and gray. “Love one another;” it’s there hanging on my wall, can’t you see? It is through patient instructing, and the taking up of such humble objects as the basin and the towel that we grow in our sanctification, and in our sanctifying, cleanse the bride of Christ from spots and blemishes. We need to teach with patience. Love with tenderness. And free our humility from pride. “We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification. For even Christ did not please Himself, but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached You fell on me.’ For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” — Romans 15:1-4
So what is the will of God for my serving and ministry where He has me right now? I might find the first trail of clues as to that calling by looking at the surrounding familiar faces that greet me day in and day out and at my local church. And I am called with my hands and feet to serve them with the basin and towel. Even if they are odder than I could have believed and worth far more than I guessed.
Coram Deo!
All the pain, all the toiling, and all the suffering that we go through is worth it when we see the sunrise of a new baby’s smile.
Reject the wordly lie that says,
That life lies always up ahead,
Let power go before control becomes a crust around your soul,
Escape the hunger to posess,
And soul-diminishing success,
This world is full of narrow lives,
I pray by grace your smile survives.For I would wander weary miles,
Would welcome ridicule, my child,
To simply see the sunrise of your smile,
To see the light behind your eyes,
The happy thought that makes you fly,
Yes, I would wander weary miles,
To simply see the sunrise of your smile.Now close your eyes so you can see,
Your own unfinished memories,
Now open them, for time is brief,
And you’ll be blest beyond belief,
Now glance above you at the sky,
There’s beauty there to blind the eye,
I ask all this then wait awhile,
To see the dawning of your smile.
Coram Deo!
It took me long enough, but I finally finished Chris and Tatiana’s pictures from their wedding — You can see the highlights from their wedding if you click here.
Coram Deo!
I think my heart just melted into a puddle looking at those big blue eyes. What a frighteningly cute little charmer! 
I wonder if he thinks it works to grin like that when he’s in trouble, too?
Coram Deo~
My most recent photography shoot was doing an engagement session with Levi and Alyssa, which included taking out the local fire station engine, where Levi is a firefighter. Here’s one of the pictures I got from their session:
More to come soon!
Coram Deo~
This is another gem of a post from the Femina blog. Mrs. Wilson’s posts, of late, about having a humble and sacrificial love for those we don’t get along with the easiest has been convicting. These people are likely the ones that we are in contact with the most, at home, and at church. It’s easy for me to excuse treating them with a harsh and complaining attitude, when instead I should be laying aside my oftentimes petty grievances on a daily basis to sanctify and serve my neighbor, and the body of Christ at my local church.
You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.
— C.S. Lewis
Coram Deo!