Up the Sunbeam

-- The sky directly above me was dark and close with low, dense clouds. Across the valley, visible in peek-a-boo splendor, the sunrise was happening above and beyond the thick bank of clouds. You see, the sun rises in flaming beams of gilded glory even when our view is obscured by an ocean of clouds--it is always warm, always beautiful, always radiant.  "Then he gave them an illustration to show that they must always pray and never lose heart." Luke 18:1 PHILLIPS Dr. Luke tells his readers at the beginning of this chapter exactly the principle Jesus was illustrating before he relates the parable Jesus told. Nice of him, don't you think? This time at least, there is no treasure hunt for a truth veiled in a  cryptic   story we may or may not fully understand--I love that! This was a parable about an unjust judge who, though reluctant and uncooperative at first, was ultimately persuaded to give justice to a woman because of her persistence in pleading her ...

-- The seasons are changing, as much as they ever do in this part of Northern California. The changes are subtle here, slow, surreptitious, easy to miss if you're not paying attention. The light changes color before the leaves do; it slopes in at a different angle and whispers of changes to come. The overnight lows are lower, as are the daytime highs, climbing 'only' to the mid seventies, and the Californians hunch their shoulders and hug themselves for warmth. They start looking for their sweaters and dig out their supply of words like COLD and FREEZING! I chuckle at their hyperbole and tell them I'm just finally getting comfortable--I will allow the occasional use of COOL, perhaps even CHILLY if I'm feeling especially generous, but COLD?  Um, NO! I do not miss the high, flat, smoggy, metallic skies of our hot Contra Costa summers, and I always thrill to see the splashes of color the trees don in autumnal celebration of cooler weather. The natural changes around...

-- Three days after God called LIGHT out of nothing into the blank space of His new universe, He gathered a handful of it up and rolled it into a fiery, glowing orb and set earth whirling around it. From that day to this one, there has never failed to come a sunrise. We set our lives in whirling motion of our own every day, based consciously or unconsciously, on our confidence that another sunrise will come tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that . . . Our faith in the next sunrise is not something we have to muster up, or exert effort and break a sweat to produce, or even think about most of the time. We have a good long track record to base our faith upon, we've never known the sun to sleep in or call in sick or go on vacation, so we trust that it will continue to be its faithful sunny self for as many bright tomorrows as God allows. When it is so easy to have faith in something as finite and beyond our control as the sunrise, I wonder why we have such cha...

Our house has no front windows. It didn't occur to us when we bought the house that this would be a big deal, but we have discovered over the last 10+ years that it is sort of a big deal. You can't see anything that's going on in front of the house without running upstairs. It's a weird feeling. One of the first things we did was to replace the solid double doors at the entry with a single door with decorative side panel windows. Two slim slivers of glass, faceted decorative glass at that, through which light can come in and we can peer out. I feel like a peeping Tom when I look out these windows, bending down to put my eye up to the little bits of glass that give a true view, trying to see who rang the doorbell, or if my kids are home yet.  Unlike the peeping Tom, I'm peering out, not in! This morning, I rounded the corner from the dining room on my way upstairs and I saw the facets of my beveled, leaded glass windows glowing with what was...

-- Like a painter's palette holding orange and gold and pu rple . . . the glory of a new day comes in vivid color. Painted by the Artist's imagination, a one-of-a-kind, never-to-be-seen-again masterpiece. The day, only just begun, stretches out, as yet unlived, untouched. Birthed in radiant beauty, it holds fresh promise bathed in new mercies. " . . . His mercies begin afresh each morning." Lamentations 3:23 NLT If the tiny new beginning of a new morning brings God's new mercies, what do you suppose the dawn of not only a new year, but a new decade must bring? Where the year ahead is all a big unknown to us, He is already well-acquainted with every moment of it. He has a limitless supply of Himself with which to meet our every moment's need . . . with new mercies . So I wrote Saturday night in anticipation of my Sunday publishing day. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sunday morning: Well, just as I was writing about being able to rely on God's mercifu...

The first thing any photographer learns is that taking pictures is all about capturing light. To the youngest child with his first camera it quickly becomes obvious that without light, you can't take a picture. George Eastman once said, "Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography. " There are many things to know about light and the shadows created by its angle and intensity, and I feel like I'll always have more to learn. One thing you discover early is that light changes constantly. From one moment to the next the scene in front of you can change dramatically and is affected by many variables. If you aren't ready to capture that moment when it happens, it may never look exactly like that again. We are living in an extremely changeable time in history. It feels as though nothing is as it appears; what we think we see turns out frequently to ...