50 cent gamble
Who could pass this up?
Credit: http://failblog.org/2010/10/29/epic-fail-photos-mystery-choice-win
Posts from the ‘hope’ Category
Oct 30
2 Comments
Jun 14
Hopesterized, Obama Style
Consider this a warning from the Poison Ivy Awareness Association of America
Remember that famous (or infamous, depending on your political leanings) Shepherd Fairey Obama hope poster? For some reason, I got the itch to find out how to duplicate that look on my own. Sure, there are websites where you can upload a photo and have your face Obama-hope-posterized — “hopesterized” — but where’s the fun in that?
Fairey created his original using screen printing techniques, but with this handy tutorial as a starting point, Photoshop and Illustrator save you the stencil and acrylic work.
A sad portrait of a friend who was attacked in the face by poison ivy served as my guinea pig for my first “hopesterize” attempt. My technique’s not yet worthy for a spot in the Smithsonian next to Fairey’s original.
But, it’s still a pretty convincing warning about the dangers of poisonous foliage.
Love it? Hate it? Share it!
Connecting God’s dots can give you crazy pictures
Today has been a little discouraging. In the grand scheme of things, I have nothing to complain about. But right now I’m frustrated because I got two papers back and got a little roughed up on both of them. And the experience has me thinking about how we as people — and as Christians — interpret the things that happen in our lives.
Take my two bum papers, for example. Are they a sign? If so, what do they signal? Is God telling me to buckle down and do a better job next time? Or is he telling me to quit school because it’s not His will for my life? Those are two very different possibilities that use the same evidence. But I know people who base major decisions on the events in their lives because they connect the dots and think they see God will.
place place a in for everything its everything
As people, we are born with a strong desire to make sense the world around us. We seek to arrange everything we encounter inside a framework that organizes them, gives them context, and assigns them meaning. That’s why you puzzled over the bold line of words above this paragraph for a few minutes before moving on. Your instincts told you that those words were there for a reason, that they somehow related to each other and that together they expressed meaning. In other words, you assumed there was…
A place for everything and everything in its place.
That’s ok. It’s totally natural.
As Christians, we have an extra layer we like to apply to help assign meaning to the events, sights, sounds, and people in our lives — God. We believe that God is in control and he is organizing the scattered bits of our experience into a coherent sequence for a directed purpose. God, we think, is sovereign and he is scripting history — including our history — into a meaningful story.
Even if we can’t comprehend it now, God is placing everything in its place. Normal people don’t buy that, but we believe it. And we should, because that’s how the Bible presents it.
Our faith is the problem
But in this regard, our faith can be a problem for us as believers. We so much want to assign meaning to what is happing in the world right now, that we jump the gun. We try to tell ourselves and others what God is up to in a specific situation, even though we don’t always know for sure. In fact, a lot of times we get it wrong. Like Pat Robertson claiming the earthquake in Haiti is God’s judgment for their sins. He’s wanting to make sense of the situation, so gives it a meaning based on what he thinks God is up to.
Robertson is an extreme example, I admit. But, all of us Christians do the same thing – interpreting life in a way that fits our ideas about God and about how we want the story He’s writing to turn out. I do it. We believe in God’s sovereignty so strongly that we jump to conclusions too quickly.
This quote from N.T Wright sums it up:
One of the key words [in interpreting history] is Paul’s little word perhaps, which he uses in Philemon…’Perhaps this is why Onesimus was parted from me for a while, so that you could have him back not just as a slave but as a brother’ (Philemon 15). When Christians try to read off what God is doing even in their own situations, such claims always have to carry the word perhaps about with them as a mark of humility and of the necessary reticence of faith. That doesn’t mean that such claims can’t be made, but that they need to be made with a “perhaps’ which is always inviting God to come in and say, ‘Well, actually, no” (Christianity Today, April, 2001 p. 47).
So, I’m not going to make any bold claims or drastic conclusions because I got two bad grades in a row. Perhaps God is telling me to quit school, grab a camera and move to Africa. But I’m going to have to see a lot more of my story play out before I connect the dots that way.
And I guess the lesson is, be careful when you think God’s telling you something based on a few circumstances. You and God might wind up having very different ideas about the meaning. It’s best to let him put everything in its place…in His own time.
Anatomy of a Story
Whether you’re reading a book or writing one. Whether you’re watching a movie, a commercial, or viewing a magazine; you are experiencing Story.
I’ve been studying Story for the past 8 years now. How to build them, interpret them, transfer them, capture and retell them, and how to assess their potential emotional impact on an audience. I’m still not very good at any of those things…but I have seen and told a tale or two.
The past couple of weeks I’ve been reading the Old Testament in large chunks. No, it’s not because I’m spiritual. It’s because I’m playing catch-up on all the semester end projects I should have been working on since October.(It’s amazing what procrastination can do for your time in the Bible when you’re in seminary.)
Anyway, reading it in large sections give you a great bird’s-eye view of the major themes and movements. Usually when you read the Bible, you get bogged down in the details. You can’t see the forest for the trees… You can’t see the point for the facts.
In the middle of all this reading, I had an epiphany about Story. From a TV ad to a feature news story, to a travel magazine article, to the “greatest story ever told,” I’m seeing a simple pattern in the little stories that make up Story. It’s kind of a meta script for how good stories are put together in a way that keeps us interested, engages emotions and provokes response.
Others have already seen this pattern, this meta script for assembling good stories I’m sure…but I’m calling it:
Anatomy of Story
1. A hope is held.
2. A problem interferes.
3. The problem deepens.
4. The hope is revived.
5. The hope is realized.
Try putting the stories you come across through this filter. Does it work? Think about it in relation to the story of Christ and Christmas…
Ok…now I have to stop procrastinating and get back to my reading…
Tony
So, I was cleaning out some old files on a hard drive when I came across some short videos I did for the Salvation Army in my old college town of Shawnee, OK. It reminded me how much I miss projects like this, ones that tell stories about real people.
There’s something about pausing and looking intently at someone else’s life than makes me think about both the beauty and flaws of my own. Seeing this clip again brought back that mixture of pain and hope. And has me itching to do some meaningful projects soon!
Here’s the video, below…
Hope: Flip the Switch
We crave hope like bugs crave porch lights.
Barack Obama’s book title, The Audacity of Hope, and the favorable response by many Americans to this book — and his entire campaign for that matter — illustrate the human being’s magnetic attraction to anything resembling hope. While the hope many speak of is synonymous with a loosely defined “dream” (as in “American Dream”, rags to riches, etc.) for a better future, the true nature of hope is more concrete, more demanding, and more powerful.
We Christians are to blame for the confusion. The church does a wonderful job of telling our culture where it is going wrong. Not even so much how it is going wrong – as in, an explanation of the defect in terms that define it and propose correction – just specific instances of wrong, like a referee blowing the whistle when the ball goes out of bounds. Appraisal of this kind is one function of the Christian faith in a individual and in society at large. However, Christ did not come merely to point out the flaws of fallen humanity. That was only half his mission.
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:17)
Christ did much more than merely highlight the shortcomings of sinners. Christ offered what every longing heart craves. A rescue. Redemption. If we are to address our world as Christ did, then we must not neglect to offer hope.
The hope we offer is only as good as the hope we ourselves enjoy. Why is the Church not offering hope to people in our culture? One reason is because individuals in the church are living without hope themselves. Upward mobility / “Be all you can be” is such an ingrained value to our American society that this vague American Dream has replaced the robust notion of hope that our faith espouses. When we speak of God giving us hope or of having hope we seem to be thinking more of a Barack Obama-type “If God were president (or king, or “lord” or whatever), then he might make things better for me” dream. Or the “If I just have faith, things will work out in the end” idea.
May I suggest that we don’t have dreams, we practice hope. Hope is not something we have. Hope is something we do.
For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. (Hebrews 6:10-12)
An old commentator of yesteryear puts it this way:
Hope is…made up of an earnest desire for an object, and a corresponding expectation of obtaining it. The hope of heaven is made up of an earnest wish to reach heaven, and a corresponding expectation of it…The full assurance of that hope exists where there is the highest desire of heaven, and such corresponding evidence of personal piety, as to leave no doubt that it will be ours. (Barnes NT Commentaries)
People are drawn to hope like bugs to a porch light. So while some are huddled in their homes peeking out their curtains at the scary shadows they see scurrying around in our dark world, let’s you and me flip the switch, and let the light shine.
Hope starts with us.
A page from my blog: http://owildman.blogspot.com
