Tag Archives: rain

5 Books Worth Laboring Over on this Labor Day

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Deborah and Her Pancakes at IHop in Auburn

Deborah and Her Pancakes at IHop in Auburn

It was a nice lazy rainy Labor Day in Auburn today. For some reason it seems to rain on Labor Day. I would only know this because last year I noted it was a rainy Labor Day due to Tropical Storm Lee. This year Hurricane Isaac is long gone but we did have a nice storm front come through, giving us some much needed rain for the second half of the day. I thought it would be great to start off this Labor Day holiday with a big stack of pancakes and then labor over one of the many books I’m trying to read right now. Deborah and I were able to get the pancakes today, but I never got to the reading part, instead opting to redesign my blog.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to labor over books. I thought by now reading would come easy, or easier, but I still have to force myself to read. I know this is in part due to the multi-tasking, sound-bite culture I’m a part of, but I know reading is of the utmost importance. Even Paul said as much himself (2 Timothy 4:13).

It probably takes me 2-3 times as long to read a book, but I do get through them. Each book I finish changes me, even if ever so slightly, but I am, at least in part, a compilation of every book I have ever read. On my currently being labored over reading list is The Cost of Discipleship by Bonhoeffer, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, and The Explicit Gospel by Matt Chandler. Call it some tech form of ADHD or something, but I like to bounce around from book to book. I’ll leave those three for another day.

Below are five books well worth your time, and these five books I’m laboring over myself. I have read cover to cover the first book on my list, but the rest I am slowly and methodically laboring over page by page.

5 Books Worth Reading on Labor Day or Any Day

  • How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren
    If you are reading a book right now, and haven’t read this classic book, just put down all other books and read this one first. This is truly the book of books, one of the best books I have read to date, mainly because it provides great instruction on how to better understand what you are reading. For my full critique of this book, see the review here.
  • 25 Books Every Christian Must Read by Renovaré
    Ok, so this book is like a whole list of it’s own, but if you are looking for a fantastic starting point for some of the greatest books ever written, this is a great place to start. This book is #37 on my bucket list, not this book, but all the books in this book. Most are epic volumes, like Calvin’s Institutes and Augustine’s City of God, but they are classics for a reason.
  • The Life and Diary of David Brainerd by David Brainerd and edited by Jonathan Edwards
    Not the easiest book on the list to read, but a real incredible look at the life of a believer and missionary. Brainerd’s diary shows how someone tried to understand how to serve a sovereign God while fighting depression and illness.
  • The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal
    This was a total unknown to me until I read it through some footnote in some book, which might have been #5 below, at this point I don’t remember. This book is just an overpowering book. John Wesley said that of all the definitions of Christianity that he had encountered, the best was that of a Scotsman who lived in the 17th-century. He said: “Christianity is the life of God in the soul of man.” It’s a short read, and an easier book to read, but one of unending depth that requires time to digest.
  • God’s Passion for His Glory : Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards by John Piper and Jonathan Edwards
    This book, the only one on the list that isn’t currently available on Kindle (although it was when I bought it in 2011), is two books in one. In the essay The End for Which God Created the World, the great theologian Jonathan Edwards proclaimed that God’s ultimate end is the manifestation of his glory in the highest happiness of his creatures. John Piper adds as a Part One to this essay in the form of a fantastic biography on Edwards, one that makes the Edwards essay easier to understand.

This Week’s Project 365 with Sunset Over the Fillmer Farm

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Sun Setting Over the Pasture

Sun Setting Over the Pasture on the Fillmer Farm

Wow yet another week has come and gone. This is my weekly Project 365 post which includes a week where we had our kids and grandkids out to visit from Colorado and go to do a quick family photo shoot one afternoon. The images below are the chosen images for Day 223 through Day 229. You can see the entire shoot on Flickr at http://P365.me.

My favorite shot again this week was a sunset (above), which ended up being a little similar to last week but not. I love sunsets, and this one came right after a heavy summer rain shower when the sun peeked just below the clouds. The shot above was taken with my iPhone 4S, a camera that continues to amaze me each week. We finally started to get some rain in our area and this week was one afternoon shower after another. Hard to complain about the rain when we have been in a drought for so long, but it did make for some very hot and humid days, something our family from Colorado thought was a little less than pleasant. I love how different each week’s photos turn out in this project, next week is sure to be more of the same… different.

Update on Photo Project 365 From June 2012 :: P365.me

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Project 365 June 2012 Update

Project 365 [Day 199] Waiting for the Rain in the Parking Lot

It’s the first part of July and I finally got around to updating my June Project 365 Photos (read about my Project 365 here). I am up to day 215, as of June 30th, which makes me 58.74% of the way through this project. Sometimes it feels like I’m taking the same photo every day, but I keep trying to find a unique image each day, and so far I have 215 unique images over my my Flickr gallery. My favorite shot (that was not published previously on my site) for the month of June is above, probably because it is a little more abstract. This huge storm came up while I was sitting in the Publix parking lot waiting for Deb to come out, and this shot was the result.

I still have mixed feelings about this project. It’s a pain in the neck, it takes time, it’s every single day with no break, and it’s a unbelievably accurate look at your life one photo at a time. Just like all photography, when I look at each individual image, I can remember great details about each day, just because I took one single photo. The mind is an amazing thing, and images create a very strong reminder in the brain, causing us to remember details we would otherwise have long forgotten. I know there is some psychological reasoning behind this, but once that image is taken, it takes certain details and moves them from our short-term RAM memory and places them in the long-term storage. That’s what I love about photography.

Just 151 more days and photos to take, and I can’t wait for November 29th when I can say it is finished. You can see a few previous blog posts on Project 365 here. To see the full gallery over on Flickr just go to http://P365.me.

Spring Rains Across the South Today :: Friday Feet

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Friday Feet Photo of the Day

Today was one of those rainy days that every time I tried to get out and get something done, it poured. I ended up cutting a few acres of grass, getting soaked in the process, then trying to finish my current book (How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth), but such is the way the weather goes in the Spring in the south. That’s better than not getting any rain at all, which has been the case over the past several years with our drought. Today my iPad and a rainy screened in patio will serve for a long overdue Friday Feet Photo of the Day.

Fall Storms Roll Through Auburn University Today :: Photos

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It was a dreary cloudy day in Auburn today, but almost 80*F in the middle of November, until this really fast moving storm system sort of caught everyone saying “what just happened?” These storms have now moved east doing about the same damage as they head towards the east coast. We didn’t have any damage at our place but there was pretty significant damage all around Auburn in the form of downed trees and power lines, some turned over cars, and apparently some damage to Auburn High School and Haley Center on campus. We are thrilled to hear that, so far, there haven’t been any injuries associated with the storm.

The only reason Deb and I happened to be on campus at lunch time today was to get her out of the house for a quick lunch in Foy Hall where they have one of her favorite places to eat. Once the sirens started going off on campus (see a really splotchy video here) everyone headed for the hallways and campus became like a ghost town. It’s just part of living down here in the south, glad no one was hurt. I did however get some photos while we were walking/driving around trying to get home (all taken with my cell phone here). Stormy weather always makes for such great lighting conditions, even if it is just on your cell phone.

Cloud Explosions in the Sky at 40,000 Feet

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Today, a quick photo of the day post with one of my favorite inflight photos from my recent flight between Amsterdam and Uganda. This is a huge thunderstorm over the Mediterranean Sea that towered at least to the 40,000 feet we were flying at this day, and you can see went quick a bit above where we were flying. Somehow these two massive thunderstorms looked like (to me) two nuclear bombs exploding, and of course we were flying into these storms.

I have another post almost ready to go with photos about water, and the well, and kids, and all that stuff so look for that next time.

Trying to Figure out How to Tell a Thousand Stories Simultaneously

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I came here, in part, with the hope of being able to tell some stories through pictures, now, with a few days left on this trip I don’t even know where to begin. There are a thousand stories for every scene and situation that we come across. If I have time, I’m going to post a few here tonight while we still have power (it’s off and on). Yesterday we went to a few houses to install rain catches. I know nothing about installing these things but the lady of the house came out to get water in this 50 liter jug(?) thing and I couldn’t believe she was going to do this by herself. As you can see below I couldn’t even carry it by myself. This lady, and several others were around the front of the house and they got to laugh at the two white people trying to carry something a woman did every day. There were really sweet ladies. For some reason I haven’t figured out yet, the kids when you take their picture (for the most part) grin from ear to ear but the adults go stone-face when their photo is taken, so many of the adults, like these three woman in the photo below were laughing with us and smiling until the second we took the pic. They are pretty amazing.

The first shot below shows the rain barrel that was partly full of rain runoff. I am filling the blue bucket with a pan to take it back to her house. The second shot and third is just trying to life the can which had to weigh something like 70 pounds at a minimum. The lady in the shot below is who we were taking the water to and if you look in the back behind her that house (the lady sitting in the opening) also had a great story. The shot of me with the little boy actually ended up being Tonya Styles sponsor child who was watching us install the rain catch systems (so if anyone on Facebook can tell her it’s over here that would be great).

T-Minus 10 Days and Counting Plus it Rained :: Friday Feet

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Another last minute Friday Feet but it’s still Friday for about another hour. Last Friday I was talking about how it hasn’t rained at our place in forever, and this week it rained off and on all week. My day today started out with rain and ended with rain and our pond in the photo from last week has more than quadrupled in size, what a difference a week can make. Today’s Friday Feet comes from looking towards our house at the same pond as the rain clouds moved across the property. The shot was taken with my iPhone after hours and hours of cutting grass in 100% humidity right before the heavy rain came back.

This week has been crazy busy as we (Cornerstone) continue to prepare for becoming a multi-site church and I can’t believe there are only 10 days left before our team leaves for Africa. I would like to say I’m ready to go and have everything done that needs to be done but that probably won’t even be the case come next Monday when we leave for Atlanta.

Patience Results in a Magnificent Sunset :: Saturday Summary

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Above is how my day ended yesterday, but what was in between was almost a blur. I know today is Sunday, but I’m doing my photo Saturday Summary today. Sunday’s in the summer are usually a little more laid back but they haven’t been so far, and yesterday was pretty incredible, and exhausting. Within two services we had more baptisms than I could count (pics here), a Uganda team trip meeting (for the October trip), four video sessions shot for our small groups (see April’s blog), a quick trip to Starbucks in severe lightning storms (see photo below), then another Uganda trip meeting (July trip), which was semi-rained out but still took place.

Uganda 2011 July trip update: So our Uganda team is leaving at the end of July (details here), just four short weeks away now, and is commissioned to (among other things) put together a soccer camp of sorts for the kids. The team is all guys this time, and for the most part, skilled in coaching soccer, except for me who will be behind the camera. We follow a full mission team that leaves the U.S. mid-July and we arrive in Uganda about the same time they leave to come back home. We have been meeting together as a team to get to know each other and plan the trip, and yesterday was one of those this-is-what-we-planned but this-is-what-happened-meeting. We were going to meet at a local soccer field and everyone was going to get some practice in, including me with my camera. As lightning bolts rained down we all ran for cover, stood around for an hour getting to know each other better, got out on the field, kicked the ball approximately two times each and scattered when the next lightning bolt came down in close proximity. I did manage to get one shot of Jason kicking a soccer ball to prove that we both got our practice in, sorta.

Driving home about 8pm last night I was so tired I couldn’t really think straight at that point and then all of a sudden the sun burst out of the storm bank just above the horizon line and I pulled over to the side of the road where I could see the horizon (not an easy thing to do in Alabama where you can’t see more than 20 feet because of all the trees) and got the shot at the top. The beauty that only God can produce in the sky with a mix of clouds, rain, lightning, and sun was a truly magnificent end to the day (it didn’t matter that the storm had fried my gate and I couldn’t get into my own property when I got home… but that’s another story).

As some of you may know I am still trying to raise money for these two mission trips, and every single donation helps no matter the amount, even $10 will go a long way when combined with everyone else’s donation. If you would like to help visit the info page or make an online donation here. Thanks!