Gaining skills...

I've been blessed to do several photo shoots lately- a few with some teacher friends of mine and some of my neighbors. They are letting me gain some photographing skills on their kids and they get the bonus of a free photo shoot. Here are a few of the cutie pies.

These are the Shoemaker Twins... Jacob and Nicholas. 18 months old. I think Nicholas was the sweet one and had the bruise on his forehead. Jacob was the fussy one.

This is their big brother, John Michael, who would have prefered being at the monster truck show than at the park doing a photo shoot. But he's still cute.
Here's a shot of my friend Susan's little angel, Emily, who just came to town last weekend for a visit from Houston.

This is a candid of Miss Anden Grace. She's a cutie patootie.

Here is my friend Peezie's little baby, Isabelle. She turned one this month. And by far, my best subject. She just sat calmly for every picture! Such a sweetie!

"Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him."

~Psalm 127:3

Driven by Eternity

I just got through reading a fabulous book about eternity. Actually, when I think about it, the book was more about how we should be living NOW while we are here on earth and how we should be making plans for how we are going to spend eternity. The book is called "Driven by Eternity" by John Bevere. It was a powerful book that gets to the point of what should be our focus until we see Jesus. He stresses how important the Word of God is, and how as Christians, we must be in the Word more.

"Remember, we already know what will be the standard at judgment, 'the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.' " (John 12:48)

It's a great book. John Bevere gets a lot of flack from differing sides of the Christian community. He gets a lot of grief from people who are members of or pastors of certain types of churches because he basically slams the entire idea and says that these churches are not growing folks that will gain eternity. He gets harsh criticism for that. If you can past his personal convictions about the church, I think that there is so much to gain from this book. In it, he uses a parable to teach us a lesson on what the judgment seat of Christ is going to be like. He doesn't gloss over it to make it sound nice AT ALL. He's harsh and states that if we don't get it together here, we could miss it. He doesn't believe in "once saved always saved" because so many people think they are riding that train and really they don't have a ticket or even clue ONE about what being a follower of Christ is really about. He believes in a true, radical conversion and then living out your life surrendered to the will of God. Then and only then does he believe you are able to be heavenbound. The thing I walked away with after reading it is how I long to be in Heaven and hear Him say "well done." It made me want to live a HOLY life, and it made me want to be in the Word so much more than I have been. To me, any book that can instill that is a keeper.

when the moon hits your eye...

The first total lunar eclipse in three years happened tonight, and I was outside with the 300 zoom to try to capture it. Lunar eclipses occur when Earth passes between the sun and the moon, an uncommon event because the moon spends most of its time either above or below the plane of Earth’s orbit. Naturally, I was wishing that I had a telephoto lens right about now, but I'll have to settle for the 300 for now. By the time North America could see the eclipse, it had already happened. We caught the back end of it. Here is the eclipse from our part of the world.

What I found most interesting about tonight's total lunar eclipse (besides the fact that it was happening) is the fact that so few people knew about it. I was the only one out on my block with my camera stalking down the moon like I was a paparazzi. My neighbors waved at me from inside their house... surely they must think I'm a mental case walking around at night with my camera. But it made me think how God is working and moving and doing things in our midst that we don't even notice. He worked on this magnificent heavenly display and so few even saw it. We are too busy. We are busy toiling away like little ants. But HE is still there, in all His power and might, just waiting for us to see Him and seek Him. Makes me want to slow down and see what He's up to.

"How awesome is the LORD Most High,

the great King over all the earth!" ~ Psalm 47:2