“"History will record that 2009/2010 was the year of the demise of Christianity because it snowed every weekend and all the churches went broke." — Rev.  Dean Snyder, via my friend Chris Owen’s Facebook page

That’s very funny.

The weekend’s storm was incredible. Well, at least for this area. It was beautiful and annoying all at the same time. I’ve been lucky enough not to be stuck in the snow at all while I’m driving. Though in the passenger’s seat of my brother-in-law’s 4WD F150 we spent nearly 30 minutes driving back and forth attempting to escape an off-ramp after helping a stuck driver. We succeeded in escaping, but unfortunately the driver eventually had to ride away without his car.

The photo at the top of this page is a close up of the little stick poking out of the table on the image on the left here. It’s a measuring stick. The photograph was taken before the snow ended at about 28 inches.

And, with all the snow, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make it the subject of this week’s video blog. Enjoy.

I always forget. And I cannot afford to. Tonight, Moses reminds me in the midst of his plea to Israel before entering the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 8:11-17:

Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’

I’m apt to praise myself for my accomplishments. And indeed there is a place to be proud of our accomplishments and satisfied with what we’ve accomplished. But, only in its proper place. And that is in a place of remembering the Lord. Who is is and what he does.

It’s the Lord who is patient with us and disciplines us for our good.

Notice what Moses points out when reminding Israel to remember the Lord. The ‘good’ houses they would build and live in, the flocks and the gold and the silver that would ‘multiply’. Their  hearts that would be encouraged and ‘lifted up’ with their good fortune. And he beckons them to remember the tribulations that he brought them through. Not without pain and not without suffering. But by God’s patient and disciplining hand. They were prepared to remember God who is their good.

Who honestly remembers these always? I do not. But I wish to. And my prayers, I hope, will reflect that honest desire.

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses warns the people not to make an image of any god. But he prefaces it by reminding them that they heard a voice, but they didn’t see anything.

“…watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth.”

The fact that the people saw nothing was the ground Moses used, in this instance, to condemn the making of ‘carved’ images. After all, they did not actually see God, how could they possibly make a carved image of him, unless they filled in a lot of blanks with their own flimsy speculation.

Over the course of generations, that could be tragic. People might begin to neglect the the words they heard from God, and pay more attention to the form they’d created for him from their own minds.

As I read this this morning, it dawned on me that, in a way, we break this commandment quite regularly. Although, not quite in the way that Moses laid it out.

Today, while we have the complete Word of God, much of the church has a habit of going beyond what the scriptures actually say in an attempt to fill in gaps that God intends would remain open.

We have to be careful to remember that—like the Israelites who were permitted to make ‘carved images’ in one sense, they were not allowed to place them in the position of any kind of deity (especially God)—we also are allowed to speculate on spiritual things. We are even allowed to use our best judgments to make decisions and find the right path. But, we’re never allowed to elevate these speculations to the level of authority that the Word of God exclusively holds.

With good reason David reckons God to be his comfort. Looking to the higher promises of God to carry him through trying times. Psalm 61:1-3:

Hear my cry, O God,
    listen to my prayer;
from the end of the earth I call to you
   when my heart is faint.
Lead me to the rock
   that is higher than I,
for you have been my refuge,
   a strong tower against the enemy.

God’s promises to, and covenants, with his people are rocks which are higher than we are. Greater than our own best promises to God. Like David, when we are in trouble from the world and from ourselves we can seek those and find confidence. This appears to be the classic interpretation of this passage. And it is an encouragement, to say the least.

But for me, when I read this passage, I couldn’t help be see Christ as the “Rock that is higher than I”.

When I am weak and lonely, struggling to live a life worthy of the Gospel (as fantastic a feat as that is), I can pray to God that he would lead me to a Rock that sits far above me. Christ is an immovable rock whose footing is far beyond anyone’s natural reach. But by God’s power and Christ’s sacrifice, it is a place we will (and in one sense have already) ascend.

It is sanctification. A conforming to Christ’s image which cannot happen except if we cry out to God. Incidentally, something we rarely do before our hearts grow “faint”.

For the Washington, DC area, the national weather service is advising us to be prepared for a major snow storm this Saturday. About two feet of snow is what they’re predicting. That’s pretty significant. And as I was reading the scriptures today, it reminded me of the Noah and flood.

Only a few verses before the story of Noah and the Ark in Genesis 6, God is noting that the people are multiplying and becoming progressively more and more wicked. Then, he declares that the number of man’s years will be 120.

After reading it through several times, doing some word-research on my own and then hearing from the puritans (John Calvin, in particular), I feel pretty confident in saying that God was giving humanity 120 years before wiping almost everyone out with the flood. If that is a reasonable interpretation of the text, then that’s pretty amazing.

Though things were in sad shape and getting worse, God left them with over a century to turn. Of course, they didn’t, and that sucks. But, God’s grace and mercy in that are beautiful.

It keeps us in the tension between eagerly waiting and praying for Christ’s return, yet at the same time praying that God would have patience and mercy and bring in many, many more who don’t yet believe. And that’s just where we are. Waiting for the ‘flood’, knowing it will come, yet hoping that God will wait and more will be saved.

That’s pretty cool, I think.

As I was taking a shower this morning it occurred to me what was spiraling down the drain. Water. Clean water. I could drink the water coming out of the shower faucet if I wanted to and I would be fine. More than fine—refreshed. And it dawned on me that it’s a privilege to have clean water as an abundant resource.

More than a billion people in the world have no access to clean drinking water. Most of their water comes from dried riverbeds and even puddles. And, oftentimes they have to walk several miles just to reach the tainted water. That’s crazy.

What’s even crazier though is that machines have actually been invented that purify water with surprisingly little energy needed, and fairly quickly. But there’s not very much money in providing clean water to developing countries. So, as of yet the technology project hasn’t picked up enough funding. Or course, I could be mistaken about all that. I saw it on the Discovery Channel, but can’t recall the name of the project.

So, for now, drilling wells is about as good as it gets. It costs about $5,000 to dig a well, which provides clean water to an entire village.

Reading over their website, I think that The Water Project may be the best place to donate money to provide clean water to folks overseas (although Water:Charity would be a cooler, though not necessarily better, option). TWP connects givers to various projects already, or soon to be, in progress. When filling out the donation, they give you the option to designate where your money is going. It even gives you the option to designate that all of your money be used for the actual building process. In other words, none of it turning around for various organization operating costs.

Being that water, just after air, is possibly the most taken-for-granted thing we have, and knowing that so many people don’t have it, I think TWP may be an really excellent way of giving some of our abundance to solve a really serious problem. I’m planning to give. You should think about it too.

Last Thursday my business participated with the national company Groupon to offer my services to customers at a massive discount. Like, over 90% in fact. Being that the offer is now complete, I thought I would share my initial reflections on the experience as a person and a businessman.

The images on the left are full size screen grabs of the offer and the comments section of the Groupon website.

It is too soon to really reflect much on my actual experience delivering such a bangin’ offer since I still have yet to actually go out and shoot any of these portrait sessions. But I have already interacted with many of my future portrait subjects who bought into the offer and I can say I’m very excited to see how this offer pans out for the future of my business.

For the offer, I worked with the Groupon representative/salesperson/somethingorother Emily. She was great. Always responding to emails and phone calls quickly. She even offered to answer questions on the comments page for me if I got too busy. I hope she got a healthy commission because she deserves it! (If you ever run a Groupon offer for your business, you should try and get her!)

Being fairly new in the world of business and marketing and having never leased much control over my customer relations to another company, I was anxious about how things would go. But Groupon made it easy and fun. Emily especially did a great job of making me feel comfortable with the whole ordeal. I’ve already recommended it to a number of business minded friends.

On the day of the offer I spent pretty much all day next to my computer answering questions via email, answering the phone and responding to comments on the Groupon website. It was busy, but exciting.

So far, the customers have been great. Four of the hundred and ninety-five portrait sessions have already been booked. One at Great Falls, two in Washington, DC and one hasn’t selected a location just yet. But I’m really excited to start shooting them. I’ve been working on building a (very) small team of photographers behind the scenes. I’m really looking foreword to using all these portrait sessions to deploy our collective talent.

The exposure, also, was invaluable. Thanks to Groupon’s model, I’ve already made a number of good contacts and potentially future wedding clients. And, my website spiked to nearly four thousand hits which has produced a pretty steady stream of phone calls from new and potential customers.

All-in-all, I highly recommend Groupon for businesses. So far, it’s a great experience. I have every intention of trying to run another offer next year. It’s also great for the customer. They get a great deal and an awesome opportunity to sample products and services that otherwise might cost them a lot of money.

Try it out!