Picture Year in Review: June

You will go out with joy and be led forth in peace, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Isaiah 55:12

Picture Year in Review: May

I'm an Uncle!

Picture Year in Review: April

Ignite Jr High All-Nighter

Picture Year in Review: March

Everglades, FL

Picture Year in Review: February

Wipeout

Picture Year in Review: January

Began dating this beautiful woman January 4

Picture Year in Review: December

What Christmas is all about

Picture Year in Review: November

Let us drink a toast...

Picture Year in Review: October

Mr. Jake Lorenson at Fall Fest. 

A Year in Review

Last September I made one of the greatest purchases of my life (second to my MacBook), I got a digital SLR camera and proceeded to take what artistic and creative genes i possess (thanks, mom!) and use them for a different art medium. I decided, in honor of these past twelve months, to devote my next twelve posts to one picture a month that really captures what that month meant to me. Nothing super profound, just a fun exercise for me...and a painful one...its hard to pick JUST ONE from each month...

September 2010
Ignite Jr. High, the place to be on Sunday nights. teaching and leading Ignite was one of the highlights of my life, God did a great work in my heart as we laughed, played, sang and learned about Him.

Angry Pastors

I love Angry Birds. I just adore those hilarious, squawking, destructive, pig-hating, self-mutilating, masochistic, egg-laying, exploding balls of fun. I even love the cheesy musical background (OK, not really). So far i have played and beaten 635 levels. and yes, there are still more.  I have spent so much time throwing these valiant birds at those devilish pigs, calculating trajectory, designing elaborate ways to drop my bird in exactly the correct spot in exactly the right sequence, shouting in triumphant delight or furious agony (there is always that one tiny pig that you cant kill no matter what, he just sits there and grins....and then it becomes personal). Maybe its because I've invested so much time, energy, and yes, emotion, or maybe its just because I'm a Pastor, but I have felt the need to develop a theology of these Angry Birds. You may laugh (frankly, I don't blame you). Hurling awkward spheroid bird caricatures at similarly awkward swine does not seem, at first blush, to lend itself much to any kind of redemptive value. In truth, I tend to shy away from over-spiritualizing the things we take part in every day (sometimes a game can just be a game, right?), I wouldnt want to ruin mindless, bird-launching fun with corny Christian illusions and metaphors. I would hate to read too much into a cartoon bird on a singular mission throwing itself with utter abandon at the walls of opposition time and time again without any regard to its own safety or well-being. To trivialize the idea that all various kinds of birds are needed to overcome the obstacles and defeat the enemy; or to overemphasize how they sacrifice themselves with devastating consequences for the sake of another. Or to overstate how the plans of the enemy become more and more elaborate and difficult to overcome, yet even after 635 levels they sit in the slingshot ready to be used again, "trusting" in the hand of another to guide them. That reckless abandon is, to me, what makes this game terrifyingly addictive. (That, and the sheer malevolent complexity of the levels.  Rovio employs some seriously nefarious people)
Truthfully, the redemptive value of this game is probably simply just in its absorbing ability to help me kill time while growing my sanctification as I learn to not scream profanities at little grinning green balls of asinine swine. Maybe.