Another day in the life...

Note:  I went to preview this post and the playlist started with Chris Tomlin's The Way I Was Made.  No joke!  Seriously!  I highly recommend scrolling to the bottom and changing it to this song for this post.  It is perfect.  You'll see what I mean!

I was hoping to show you some awesome new pics with my new to me Olympus FE-4000 Aunt Janine gave me, but it has a different type of hook up than my laptop...tomorrow I will see if I can upload them on Matt's computer instead.  I was playing with the supermacro mode on it.  Fancy!!  I can't wait to see how it looks on the computer screen, but tonight you will have to suffice with little old me!  ;o)

My best shots lately would be...

Mellow

That is a pretty amazing lens flare.  As you probably already know, a lens flare is not created by the photographer.  It is purely an accident which happens at the time that the photographer takes the image.  Accident?  I'll let you judge that for yourself, but I have more than one frame with the same happy accident on it.  I really do think this is the most amazing lens flare ever.  Look at that sun!  It is just brilliant.

God has been up there painting again...and He didn't stop just there.  I love the brilliant artifact on my lens too!  God is good!

It is no wonder that How Great Thou Art is my second favorite hymn.  I can take one back to a memory in Cuba Landing, TN as a teenager.  I was learning to drive on dad's old Audi so he let me drive to the JJD Ranch out in Cuba Landing.  The road conditions were terrible.  Fog and rain.  Terrible visibility.  Dad said if I could drive in that, I could drive in anything.  Anyway, Jim and Dolly weren't expecting us but when me, dad, Billy and Josie pulled up the long drive they sure were glad to see us.

Dolly just put on more food for dinner...and I ate fried green tomatoes for the first time in my life!  True story...even though I was born and raised in Memphis, I was a teenager before I ever tried them.  I was shocked to find out how much I loved them too.  It wasn't like chitlins, which taste as bad as they smell - in my humble opinion - sorry to all you dire hard soul food lovers, but I could never get past the terrible smell.  (I guess once you put some Louisiana Hot Sauce on them they might not be too bad...but ewwww!  Not!!)

After dinner told us not to worry about driving home because the roads back to Memphis were bad and she had made up some extra beds for us to sleep in.  Southern hospitality is the best!!  Dolly cleaned up the kitchen and sent us kids, dad and Jim outside to get us out of her hair for a while.

I have no idea what Billy and Josie were doing, but dad, Jim and I were talking out under the beautiful starry sky.  The weather was bad in Memphis, but the skies were clear and you could see everything so bright and clear that it was almost unreal.  I bet I could see the Milky Way from Cuba Landing.

Well, being out there in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nothing but the beauty of God's creations, you can't help but be swept away by the moment of it all.  The three of us started talking about God and suddenly Jim belted out his beautiful testimony as his voice echoed over his land as far as it could reach.

O Lord My God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the works thy hands have made,

I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,

Thy pow'r thru-out the universe displayed;

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee,

How great thou art!  How great thou art!

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee,

How great thou art!  How great thou art!

His only accompaniment was the frogs, crickets, the wind through the trees and grasses, and the waters moving in the pond and stream on his land.  It was majestic to hear.  You know those simple moments when your heart takes a snapshot because you can't forget the memory?  This is one of mine.  

I could tell you some other things about Jim which would spoil this moment for you, but I don't think I will because they aren't important to me.  What is important is knowing if we go looking bad things in other people, we will surely find what we are looking for.  No one who has ever lived on this earth, save Jesus Christ, has ever been perfect.   

I think that truly the best I can even say about myself is that I am trying harder each day to be like Jesus.

Tonight when we were doing family scripture study this verse just stuck to me like glue!

"Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?--If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be made known unto you."  1 Nephi 15:11

In Hebrews 11:1 it defines faith for us very clearly.  "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."  And in Matthew 17:20 the Savior admonished His disciples that it only takes faith the size of tiny mustard seed to move a mountain.  Since faith the size of a mustard seed is required to move a mountain, it only stands to reason that only a tiny amount of faith, smaller than the size of a mustard seed...maybe an 1/8 or 1/16 or 1/32 or even exponentially smaller, is required to receive a witness for accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.  

What makes the difference in whether or not a person accepts Jesus Christ into their life is what they are willing to put into it.  How bad do you really want to know?  "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."  If you do not really want to know, you will never find it.  You cannot find what you do not want.

Studying the Book of Mormon to obtain a personal witness of it's truthfulness through the Holy Spirit is exactly the same way.  You can choose to study it as a scholar would, looking at it for intellectual merit.  It has been done before.  You will find chapters written in chiasmus, which would have been beyond the skills and understanding of young Joseph Smith, and some stories which concur with folklore of the indigenous American people, but you miss the real meat and bones of the book that way.  

If you do not harden your heart, it only takes a small amount of sincere faith - believing that He will answer you - to receive the answer to your prayer.  It doesn't matter whether it is about accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, accepting the Bible to be the word of God, accepting the Book of Mormon to be another Testament of Jesus Christ, or whatever the current need is in your life!  If you humble yourself and pray in faith, He will answer your prayers. 

Keep praying.  He loves you and hears your prayers, just like He hears mine.  He doesn't always give me what I want, but He always gives me what I need...and I wouldn't expect Him to give anything less than the best to anyone else!

I know this is a little different than most of my blog posts, but I really needed this for me.  I have a figure holding a magnifying glass on my tack board.  Inside the lens on the magnifying glass it says "Most people tend to find what they expect. If you don't like what you see, change your point of view."  This is a direct quote from me.  

This doesn't mean let people walk all over you or take advantage.  It means re-frame the problem as the solution.  Start thinking outside of the box and you will find that the answer to your problem was right in front of you the whole time.  Instead of being vexed with a problem, now you have opened a whole new world of question you can explore in any way you want.  It's your adventure...choose to make it wonderful!