Thought for the day

God is so great and I am so little. I am seeing the face of Jesus and it is so beautiful.

It just occurred to me

I have to admit I'm a terrible student all the way around.

Brandon Heath has the perfect song for this, it's called Wait and See.

Hebrews 11:1

Faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.

Little girls

Just being little girls.

Today's Homily

I really like the way that the priests in my parish present their homilies. I find that they are always accessible, not lofty and hard to understand. In fact, they present them in a similar fashion as Jesus did with His parables. And Jesus is the master theologian of all time.

In today's homily, Father John described a time in his life when he was teaching a course in computers. In his class, there was a girl who just never took to the information that he was presenting. He tried a variety of remedies, different approaches to the information, but to no avail. She always had this glazed over look about her. (She reminded me of me. I would even fall asleep during class.) At the end of the run of the course, Fr. John gave a Jeopardy-like quiz, summarizing the course material. And did you know, she was giving him the right answers. He thought that maybe it was a fluke, so he tried again. She kept getting them right.

I'm not an intellectual. I'm not that well read. When I venture to present myself as anything other than what I am, I always end up looking stupid. Truth is, throughout the course of my education I hardly ever creased the cover of a book. However, considering that the bulk of my knowledge comes orally and from pure logic, I do pretty well for myself.

I think it just goes to show you that human potential has more than just one standard of measurement. With Jesus in your corner, you will pass the most important test.

Casablanca Lily

I've been saving this story for Easter, it seems so appropriate.

This year I spent yet another Valentine's Day alone and I wanted to make a Valentine for Jesus, a sort of music video set to the song "Signature of Divine" by Needtobreathe. (What a great song that is!) I was going to compose one from images and video that I found on the internet. I wanted it to be perfect, so I drew from the Bible for a definition of perfection.

It made me think of this verse from Phillipians:

“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.” Philippians 4:8.

I was thinking in my mind, what is visually lovely? Flowers! Not just flowers, but flowers blooming. I went to Getty Images to find time lapse footage of flowers blooming. Getty Images is a bank of stills and footage used by professionals...broadcast quality. I found a really beautiful time lapse of a peony slowly opening but it cost something like $60 for a 21 second clip. I'm flat broke, so I endeavored to make one for myself. I went down to the local cable access station to check out a camera and chatted to the attendants about making a time lapse video. To my surprise, we determined that it was possible to do with the equipment they lend out.

The next thing I had to do was find an unopened flower. Horrocks, a local farmers market, is my source for buying flowers (very inexpensive). Peonies weren't in season, in fact, lilies were the only flowers that had not bloomed. (Lilies are also the flowers most associated with Easter.) It cost me under $2 for the single stem.

Ok, I had my flower now I had to set up a location. I found a corner in my basement to set up shop, so to speak. I didn't know how long blooming would take, so I used the fixed lighting in the basement in lieu of setting up video lights. Next, I set up the frame giving adequate space for the finished effect. I set the camera to interval record- 5 frames every 5 minutes. The lily took 3 days to bloom. (What beautiful symbolism!) And, guess what? The 30 second clip rendered out to 6.6 MB.



I showed the finished project to my new boss who was absolutely delighted with my experiment. She thought it was symbolic and wanted to know what it meant. I was looking for the meaning assigned to the Casablanca lily and I found it in an advertisement for a candle.

"Grace is an exhilarating, refreshing scent marked by pure essence of Casablanca Lily, the Roman symbol of hope. This evocative candle creates a relaxing mood in any room of the house. Each candle also includes a book of matches with the Tocca logo."



There are 66 books in the Bible and when I was just about to leave the Maryland Film Office a coworker had a daughter she named Grace. She weighed 6.6 pounds at birth.

It's amazing, that grace is.

Happy Easter!

Being a born again Christian, who was once a prodigal, you get a sense of seeing things in an entirely new light.

Today, I have the distinct honor of reading as a lector in church. (Colossians 3:1-4)

It strikes me that Easter is even more a cause for celebration than perhaps Christmas amongst Christians. It is the fulfillment of prophecy. The time He did what He came to do. When He proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that He was exactly who He said He is.

But it also strikes me that Christmas is really a better time for the exchange of gifts. Because there's nothing on this earth that can trump Eternal Life.

Christ's death on the cross finally gave meaning and substance to death.

Thank you, Jesus, for your gift of life!

1 Corinthians 1:27

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.

Same great taste, no filler.

I have now resigned to making my blog: All God, all the time.

What lengths I would go to to win the esteem of men, this has been a major cause of sin in my life. When really, it's not my greater audience.

Any acts of heroism would be wasted. My adversary is too great. It's really a God problem. If one would venture by way of helping me, simply pray for me and that will suffice. There is a greater spiritual battle at stake.