Capturing the moments

I have decided to undertake a challenge. I am quite excited. I am going to try and take a photo a day. There will probably be some pretty silly ones and some rather terrible ones but I think it'll be fun as well as making sure I am using my camera more which in turn will make sure that I learn more.

I've decided to create a new blog to upload them to that is focused on that project. This blog will still be for writing and showing you things as I see them. I'll probably upload the photos on maybe on a weekly basis? Daily could get a bit overwhelming time wise as well as the sheer number of posts that would have to go up.

You can find this project here: http://myviewingoftheworld.blogspot.com/

Capturing the moments that make up my life
 Here is Day 1:

Ichariba chode

As some people know I have a fascination with Japan. I also have a fascination with words. So a Japanese phrase with a nice meaning that I stumbled across whilst scrolling through Other Wordly is pretty cool to me. I thought I'd share it with ya'll :)

Ichariba chode 
   "Though we meet but once, even by chance, we are friends for life."

I met a lot of people when I was overseas that I may never see again which is a little sad, but even so I am glad to have met them. It's pretty cool to have some once-met people across the world that I will always consider friends.

Summer Camp

For 5 days each year hundreds of teenagers gather for a five day camp with the purpose of having fun and growing spiritually. This Summer Camp is held on a farm with tents for housing and venues and recently built ablution blocks. The camp hosts a few hundred people who are eager to have fun, wack each other with pool noodles and sweat in the inescapable heat. Needless to say there are many stories that come out of Summer Camp.


At the end of camp, as quite often in our church services, we were encouraged to think of just one thing in particular that we learnt. I find this quite cool as often there is so much packed into one sermon or talk that to remember it all and apply it all at one time is impossible, so finding one thing that stood out to focus on is helpful. This year from my copious notes (jokes, I only have about 5 pages which is unusual) I found particularly interesting the thought that our walk with Jesus is about the journey and not the destination. I have been trying to apply this idea in other areas in my life and to focus on what is happening now instead of being too focused on the future so that I don't enjoy the present. Realizing that that applies to my relationship with God as well is interesting.

In Luke 9 Jesus is approached by three people who each want to follow Him but each have things they feel they need to do before, or responsibilities they think come first, or want to follow Jesus, but would keep looking back. One says to Jesus "I'll follow you anywhere!" (v57) but as the camp speaker explained it wasn't about the destination, where they were going. It was about the journey, what happened along the way, how they went, the people they met. Sometimes we are too busy looking ahead to see what is in front of us and what opportunities we miss to influence people's lives or just to give them a helping hand.

Awestruck

Recently at youth we were discussing people's questions about God and though some of that was very interesting the most interesting thing for me was the fact that for some questions we can get answers to from people around us, from the bible or from God but some questions we just can't! Some answers are just beyond our understanding; our mortal minds cannot fathom how awesome God is!

Labels are for canned food

Labels are a nuisance and yet helpful. They can place us in a box yet help express who we are.

"My feeling is that labels are for canned food... I am what I am - and I know what I am."
- Michael Stipe

Labels may help us to identify with people and explain parts of us to some extent but we shouldn't be held back or restricted or limited by them. You're so much more than a bunch of words, so much more than these preconceived ideas and stereotypes. You're complex, complicated and wonderful.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well - Psalm 139:14

Each and every individual is unique and though we share traits, interests and characteristics which can help you to relate to a person they don't define you. That may sound contradictory to what I said earlier and I guess it is. Because they do and they don't. You are showing parts of who you are by these labels but only a part of you. You are so many things that join together to make you you. So many that I don't think you could ever be defined by words. 

God's not dead

No, I'm not going to try and come up with an argument or debate to convince you. This is just some thoughts related, in part, to the movie God's not dead.

A college student, Josh, is challenged by his psychology professor when all the students in his class are told to write down three words and sign it. "God is dead". But Josh doesn't feel that he can do this.

"But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven." - Matthew 10:33

Josh then sets out to try and prove to his class members that God is not dead. At the end of the movie he is at a Newsboys concert and all the people attending are told to send the message "God's not dead" to all of their contacts. And so are you. Yet I didn't. I sent it to the ones I for some reason felt that I should but I didn't send it to all of my contacts. Why? Maybe because I get annoyed by the amount of posts or pictures on facebook that say "Share this if you love Jesus" or "99% won't repost this, be the 1% that isn't afraid to stand up for God." Is Jesus really going to measure how much you love Him by how many likes on a social media website He gets? Maybe I just don't like getting told what to do or just tend to question things like that, but I didn't like getting told "let's show God how much we love Him" by sending a message I was told to.

What do you think? I'd be interested to hear your opinion on sharing things like this.

In which I learn how to work blinds

I thought that you might enjoy this somewhat amusing story of something that happened to me earlier this year :)

Earlier this year I spent a few weeks living in a dorm. It had one window, adorned with blinds, that faced the parking lot and my bed was beneath it. On the first night once we had closed the blinds and climbed into bed I discovered that the bright lights outside were not held at bay by the white blinds and kept me awake. Besides this fact, my room mate and I were woken up at 2am by an alarm clock. My alarm clock that had somehow been broken during the trip and didn't go off at the time it was set to. Great way to start out with my room mate! (Luckily she didn't hold that against me and we became good friends. She is awesome by the way.) After that we used her alarm clock.

With no more misbehaving alarm clocks I still had the nuisance of the lights outside that persistently shone all night. Our attempts at solutions didn't yield wonderful results. We tried hanging things onto the blinds and I spent two nights sleeping on my mattress on the floor. That wasn't a very thought through plan as the base of the bed was not solid so it really didn't make much difference.

Two weeks later we were both sitting on my bed and suddenly she has the idea to turn the blinds shut the other way, with the slats facing up instead of down.

It took us two weeks to discover how to work the blinds.

And to finish off with, on the last night during the couple hours sleep we did get between spending half the night lying in the passage talking and seeing people off we were again woken by an alarm clock. In a box. In another box on my room mate's desk.