Twenty-nine years and holding

A reasonably recent picture of my wife Jean and me... you know how hard it is to get pictures of a photographer!

Why ask why?

Just wondering... why am I embarrassed to admit I can sometimes be brought to a standstill by a glimpse of simple natural beauty? But then I wonder, why are these moments so few? Should we not be routinely awe-struck by creation's everyday declaration of the glory of God? Or are we so jaded that only the exceptional can lift our lethargic spirits? Faith, Brennan Manning says, means to want God, and to want to want nothing else. That speaks of a purity of desire I can only pretend to have... but I can want to move beyond pretending, and I do.

Better days ahead

It is s-o-o hot... take me to October! 

Small comfort

"You have been entrusted with your crisis. God could have moved in at any time, but this is His opportunity to produce in you an unwavering faith." -- David Wilkerson

2250 Lark Road

I just sent this picture here by way of Picasa, Yahoo's free photo manipulation and storage program. Seems to work easily and well... thanks for the tip, Anna!

On the responsibility of the called

"The person of God must maintain such integrity in his personal ethics that others can safely make him their role model... Whether we (Christians) deserve it or not, we, our companions and our children are marked people. The public holds higher standards for us than they do for themselves." -- Wesley L. Duewel

2700 & Trail

I really enjoy the pre-dawn hours.

Tough to photograph, but worth the effort to see...

and the fellowship can brighten your whole day!

Over the Rainbow

In the southwestern Kansas town of Meade, there has been a flap over a flag. The owners of the local hotel had received the flag as a gift from their young son, and flew it because it was pretty, with a colorful rainbow pattern. But soon some locals who equated the rainbow with the gay rights movement made a fuss, and some over-zealous do-gooder tore down the flag. The incident made some of the area papers, and I sent the following letter to a few editors in response.

Dear Editor:

How sad that those folks in Meade are unable to enjoy flying a rainbow flag, a gift from their 12-year-old son, just because in these “enlightened” times the rainbow flag is seen by some as a symbol of support for homosexual causes. And sad to realize the natural beauty of the rainbow is being co-opted, as the word “gay” has been, to mean something quite different than it did originally.
Sadder still, the real rainbow, originally intended to remind people of God’s promise to never again destroy the earth by flood, now arches over a world full of people who, for the most part, apparently either don’t know or don’t care that God will one day destroy this sin-corrupted earth by fire. Even worse, they seem to exhibit the same disregard for the eternal state of their own souls.
Fortunately for all of us, we live in an interlude between flood and fire (may I call it a “grace period?”) when judgment is postponed, allowing us time to respond in faith to the mercy of God shown through the gift of His son Jesus. Please don’t make the eternal mistake of delaying your own response too long.

Karl Detrich
Chapman

state of mine

Hey, it's the Sunflower State around here, right? Or didn't I tell you I'm from Kansas? Yep, slap in the middle of fly-over country... why don't you drop in some time? Meanwhile, here's a state flower for you.

Chasing the curve

Well. This is an experience of the "new tricks for old dogs" variety. I have heard of blogs, I have read a variety of blogs, I have offspring with blogs, now I have a blog.
A waste of time? Time will tell. If nothing else it should be a good place to store some of the photographs which now take up most of my hard drive... of course, to accomplish that storage I have to go through the process of beating several new procedures and a batch of terminology into my brain, which seems to be less and less enthusiastic about that sort of activity all the time. And at present it's too late in the day for me to make much sense out of anything at all, much less anything new.
Take mercy, for example, mercy, which is renewed every day by our loving Father who knows much better than we do how truly we need it. I like the idea of fresh abundant mercy flowing over the horizon at daybreak, cool and deep and utterly incomprehensible. I never have been able to get a good grasp on the "why" of mercy, except for the awareness that our Father prefers his children cuddlesome rather than crispy.

Okay, maybe tomorrow I'll figure out how to run this thing. Mercy!