2024

 

It's the day after Christmas and like everyone else, my eye is on 2024. Like the picture above, taken at the Clingman's Dome parking lot in the Smoky Mountains National Park, I'm looking out across the vastness of the future to see what I can see. With my fiftieth birthday coming up in 2024, it makes me pause and think about what is behind me and what is ahead. Like the never ending hills of the Smokies, I can see where I have been and am trying to see where I want to go. I have three trips planned this year, a Caribbean cruise, chasing an eclipse in Ohio plus other adventures and visiting family in the panhandle of FL. In between them, the wife and I want to plan a camping trip once a month as long as the weather cooperates. In between those, I'd love to spend as much time outside enjoying nature. 

Sitting for eight hours a day at work is slowly driving me crazy and I'd love to figure out how I can go about making a living traveling and doing photography. As I said, knowing my life is over half way gone, it makes me want to live a fuller life each day, week and year. Going out and seeing things I've never seen before and taking pictures of it all has possessed me as of late and I'm going nuts trying to figure out how to release me and my wife from the 9-5 M-F humdrum. 

I want to do a calendar this year, twelve incredible pictures of wildlife and landscapes with some small written message for each month. I'd like to sell them but to who can I sell them to and where? Got to figure that out. I'd like to do a picture book as well. I've had a thought about each chapter being a different subject. Such as, favorite landscapes, wildlife subjects like bears or birds, abandoned buildings, macro, street photos, long exposures and more. Each subject having a specific mood or theme. 

I'm just snowballing here. I like to write and I love photography, so I may incorporate them both together. And I need to bring these ideas to life and not just sit on them. So much of my life has been sitting on ideas and letting them be too big to pursue. I'm tired of sitting and dreaming, I want to live those dreams. Risks vs reward!

I'm restless. I'm frustrated. I'm needing a creative outlet. 

So, as we gaze into the crystal ball of 2024 and wish and pray and try to make it what we want it to be, let's not forget the one who is responsible for all this. 

To God be the Glory.

Sentinels

 

I named this photo Sentinels because of the towering heights they achieve. Taken at a nearby state park, they are the seed pods and fluff left over from a year of growing and pollination. Another words, harvest time. I took it at sunset and they were at least 8-9 feet high so I backed up a good distance to get the color gradient from the sunset behind them. I don't know, this pick speaks to me. I submitted it for our photo contest and didn't win but I guess it's just me it speaks to. 

Why Sentinels?

These seed pods are designed to carry the genetic information of the parent to another location to grow and produce more fruit. They have the responsibility of the next generation inside of them. Just as we carry on in our children, these stalks rise up above all and send forth their seed to be distributed by the wind. God has designed this planet and this universe to operate in similar fashion. Ground is tilled or worked, a seed is planted and tended, then it's watered and given light, later it produces fruit, dies and drops its seed to start the next generation. God works with us like we are the soil and Jesus is the seed.

God is a farmer and we are His fields that he has to plow and tend. His worker the Holy Spirit works the ground, some more than others, as some ground has rocks to be plucked out, weeds to be gotten rid of and some soil is so lifeless that it has to be amended with other soils to produce. The Spirit tends the soil and when the time is right, God plants the seed. The seed can then grow according to the soils ability to sustain life. Too rocky, too shallow, not enough nutrients can all lead to inadequate yields. If a soil is to be worked and tended, that soil must accept that work being done to it. Again this is all very representative of what God is doing in our hearts as the heart is the ground God intends to plow, plant, and receive a harvest from. 

I can go on and on as the subject material is so vast on reaping and sowing, fruit, harvest and the whole thing that I don't have enough time or pages to ramble on forever. My suggestion is to do as I did and get a concordance and do word studies. It's amazing to find answers to questions within the Bible itself. Look up harvest and it will give you every reference to harvest throughout the Bible. You can choose to read every passage or just certain ones. It gives a reference to the book and chapter and verse plus it gives the sentence the word is in for quick context. I've learned more doing word studies than listening to any preacher. 

My suggestion also is to see those words in different context. Soil is the stuff we walk on and it could mean our heart. During the word studies you often see the different meanings of those words especially in the Psalms. All we have to do is hear Jesus say, for some, the words I speak, they will not understand but for those that my Father has given them an ear to hear, they will understand. Now that is paraphrasing but it's the gist of it. He's saying, God gives those understanding into the secret meanings of His written and spoken word. Meanings of a simple parable can be unlocked where spiritual truths pour out of them given the right ear to hear them. Where one person hears a simple story, another can hear a great truth that strikes the heart to the core to cause true change in them. 

Looking at the picture above I can see my original intentions and meaning of it, however, another can come along and see something totally different. Art's meaning is often laid in the eyes of the beholder. What it speaks to them, what it creates in them as far as emotions. The gospel is the same way, some see condemnation, some see salvation, some see the truth in such clarity that it sends their whole being into a realm of unbridled servitude. 

Whatever the picture or the gospel or anything with layers of depth and meaning says to you, it's yours and only yours. Those you share it with and explain it to, it is most likely lost upon them. 

So capture the uniqueness of each experience and keep it close.

To God be the Glory