This is an image I took on Saturday when I was at a men’s retreat with my church. It was quite an amazing time. I’d say more but I don’t want to devalue the experience through the retelling. I will say that it was incredible and it was good to hang out with the other guys from the church in a relaxed setting while we were challenged to be the men that God has called us to be.
This skull was on the wall in the bathroom of the lodge we stayed at. The wood panel walls really seemed to set it off. I think the only thing that worried me was if I were to sit on the toilet, it would freak me out if it fell. Imagine sitting on the toilet and trying to do your business when this thing falls on your head or in your lap!
Sickness has been being passed back and forth around the Lehman household the last few day. I am thinking the homes affected by the water line break a few days ago may have been a little wider than previously thought. I can’t verify it, but it seems to correlate with the onset of this stomach ailment that we all ended up having at the same time.
I’ve been looking at doing more oil paintings in the near future and getting some more representational artwork out into the open. It is absolutely the opposite of the abstract stuff that I’ve produced over the last four years. In particular, I am being drawn back to landscape painting and classical still life paintings.
I think this has been a revelation that has happened in two parts.
Read More Post a comment (0)I’ve been working on a new piece called “Basic Principles & History”. I am still not sure that it is finished yet. This is a mixed media painting utilizing collage, fumage, acrylic, ink and other paper staining processes. You can’t quite see it here but there is also a crackle glaze over much of the image as well. It is 30″ x 40″ on canvas.
I am still debating if the painting is finished or not.
Read More Post a comment (2)The biggest lie perpetrated today is that we are not free. I am prone to anxiety in life. It’s one of my greatest downfalls. But it stems from this idea that I have to live up to other people’s expectations rather than just be who I am. Or rather, who I am in Christ.
- Can God take care of the bills and the debts?
- Can God watch over my son Aidan each night when he goes to bed?
- Can God make sure we have enough to eat?
My answer unequivocally is “yes”, but as I told a friend last week “My heart knows it by my brain doesn’t quite get it.”
My wife made an interesting observation today. I write like I am working on some kind of cumulative research project meticulously gathering data and facts ultimately working toward the encyclopedia entry for who I am as a person. She didn’t quite say it in so many words but that’s the way I heard it. I think I initially wanted to argue otherwise and defend it. I have come to the conclusion that she was correct in her assessment. The whole conversation revolved around my frustration that so many other people that I have helped blog and coached somewhere along the way were succeeding where I was failing. I can write day in and out, but actually saying something that is particular to me has become a chore. I felt over the last year or two that I’ve been having some kind of extended out of body experience objectively qualifying everything I write with the filter of bland factual analysis.
I am trying a different tack. Yes, the sharp pointy things that you used to put on your teacher’s chair but now you would probably get expelled from school for doing because in our culture you were trying to kill the teacher with tetanus instead of a mere tack. Tact. Yeah that word too.
A simple journal. This is a deliberate effort to be more real. Be more myself. Something like that. I think the other voice was me too, but it was a critical, self-absorbed version of myself trying to shoot myself with the same gun I was trying to aim. Maybe it’s all a bad analogy… maybe I should just shut up my critical self and write more?
image credit to one of the most unflattering images I’ve ever taken of myself
If you were to have all the resources that you needed and complete financial freedom, what would you do? It’s a question that I have been asking a lot lately. I am far from “financial freedom” and I don’t have abundant resources but it’s been getting to me lately. What would I do if I had that kind of situation handed to me?
For me, I’d probably become some kind of wilderness recluse. Buy a cabin in the middle of the woods and have most things delivered. Books and stuff I’d order from Amazon.com. I’d learn about trees and roots and what to eat and what won’t kill you in the woods. Maybe even live completely off-grid and invest in some kind of alternative energy while I grew my own food. In short, I probably wouldn’t be much help to anyone outside my own family.
Maybe it’s not just a burden that I carry of debt and having to try to supplement income every month. Maybe it’s the blessing that through my situation (however much I dislike it) that I can be used to be a blessing to others. If I weren’t in need, it might be rather difficult for me to understand those who are in need.
I know often I am blinded to the spiritual element of life. I go day to day thinking that things could be coincidence or just random events conspiring against me. I forget that we are at war. It”s not that I don’t believe that I am at war for my soul, it’s that the way this war is waged is not by physical weapons. It’s thoughts and feelings and nudges of both demonic influences and my own sinful nature that are working against God in my life.
All we get out of sin is death and destruction.
Sure, sins seem nice when they are happening. We even try to justify them a thousand different ways. But what it ultimately comes down to is that God is God. He is the one who decides if something is sin or not. In fact God even holds Himself up as the standard of Truth and righteousness.
If there is question about it, stay away.
It gets me that some argue that certain things are not sin because it’s part of their genetic makeup. I find it amazing that they have come to that conclusion because scripture tells us we have a problem called “sinful nature”. I won’t deny it.
- I am likely to speed every time I drive, so I use the cruise control to keep myself in check.
- My mother was an alcoholic, therefore I stay away from beer.
It’s really that simple. I realize that I am prone to a certain sin so I take more measures against it. Sin is still part of our nature though. Often, those sins we are most likely to commit are also the ones that we are most aware of actually being sin and are the ones we usually fight most vehemently that they are not.
The opposite of rebellion is repentance.
Once we are aware of our sin, we can accept God’s grace. Repentance means humbling yourself and turning around and going the other way when you realize you were wrong. Rebellion is going the way you know is wrong knowing it is wrong.
Sin and the Church.
Unfortunately, many people who attend church have gotten it backwards. Church is a gathering of sinners who recognize their own depravity and want to be in community with other people seeking out the way of repentance. So the church can be divided in several categories of people.
- Those who recognize their own depravity and are somewhere in the process of turning away from it and seeking God.
- Those who think they have it all figured out and so waste their time by telling those who are seeking God where they think He is.
- Those who are delusional that their particular brand of sin is somehow acceptable to God and are seeking the acceptance of the church to somehow justify themselves.
- Those who really don’t care one way or the other so they go with whatever the majority thinks.
I’m a mess, you’re a mess, we’re all a mess.
Not to sound like an AA meeting, but we are all sinners and we have to come to recognize that fact first. You don’t have to justify it to me because God’s the one who has set the standard.
I thought this was an amazing short film about hope and struggle. Thanks David for sharing it with me. I would also encourage you to check out the story of Nick Vujicic on his website, Life Without Limbs
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3
Godlessness in the Last Days
1But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,4treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.
6They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. 8Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth—men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. 9But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.
Paul’s Charge to Timothy
10You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, 11persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it,15and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
