I’ve had a rough day today, neither people nor machines are being nice to me!

       When I was in prison, I did quite a lot of praying, most of it seemed to have gone unanswered at the time but looking back on it, God preserved my marriage, my house, and somehow kept what is left of my family fed.  We used to call it the “Push method”, Pray Until Something Happens.  Now outside, I often feel like the challenges I face are worse than prison, still I continue to pray and believe there will come a time when I can look back on these times and see that God took care of me in ways I can’t see.

     This is a slightly better version of a similar image I posted earlier.  I bracketed exposure a lot and refocused between each shot, and stopped the lens down as much as possible with a 30 second exposure at 100 ASA at might in order to get the sharpest cleanest image I could.  This camera (A Rebel 300D) has a bunch of hot pixels, but I’ve cleaned up this image in Gimp so this picture is clean. The sky is a little brighter and the moon more saturated, but it shows up the trees better.  I need to set a low contrast profile for night shooting with this camera. Every time I go out and shoot I learn something new, realize something I should have done or could have done better.  The last camera I had was a point and shoot.  This is a lot more work but also a lot more flexible. It represents about an hours work in post processing.

     Just got back from watching Avengers – Age of Ultron.  If you’re looking for story, deep content, meaning, don’t go.  If you just want action packed graphics, go.  It is amazing what they can do with computer graphics these days, the speed, level of detail, realism (in the sense that it looks like a physical object verses graphics, not in the story line sense).  Good film if you’re feeling a bit irked and want to release some hostility vicariously.

     Do we flow through life or does life flow through us?  We are conceived and there is life in us, a single cell, alive.  Life fills us and we balloon out until we reach adulthood and we are full of life. We have children, life flows out of us and into them, and they don’t understand why we are sad to see life leaving us.  It flows out and our bodies shrink and wither until there is no life left but bacteria. They eat what is left of our bodies and our bodies are gone. Our spirit leaves our body to seek the source of life.

Today’s Our Daily Bread Bible verses:

     According the verse 7, if my interpretation is correct, if we do God’s will and allow Jesus to live in our hearts, then whatever we ask, it will be done for us.

     I’m doing my best to do this, but not good enough, I know.  There are times when I am asked to give but I am afraid to give because I’ve got debts and bills and doubts about having my own needs and those of my family met.  There are times when the experience I had in solitary confinement fades from my memory, and I begin to doubt God and my salvation and that of the world and lose all hope.  I want my faith to be absolute, to never forget that moment and carry it with me through the rest of my life, and that is my most urgent prayer to God.

     After that I ask for healing for my children that I’ve harmed and healing of our relationship and the capability and opportunity to express love properly, as God intended.

     And I have a selfish prayer, to be able to live in a home that the roof doesn’t leak, drive a car that doesn’t have a check engine light constantly on, and be able to pay down my debts so creditors aren’t constantly nipping at my tail.  And yes, I’m aware that there are people that don’t even have a roof, or a car, or even a bicycle, and I pray for them too.  I would like to be in a position to be able to materially help them but that seems impossible.