The Reason for God...an excerpt

My dad recommended I read "The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism" by Timothy Keller. It is awesome and something I'd strongly suggest to every believer and those who are searching or "checking out" Christianity. I got this excerpt from The LPM Blog.

"The doctrine of the Trinity overloads our mental circuits. Despite its cognitive difficulty, however, this astonishing, dynamic conception of the triune God is bristling with profound, wonderful, life-shaping, world-changing implications... Ultimate reality is a community of persons who know and love one another. That is what the universe, God, history, and life is all about. If you favor money, power, and accomplishment over human relationships, you will dash yourself on the rocks of reality. When Jesus said you must lose yourself in service to find yourself (Mark 8:35), he was recounting what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been doing throughout eternity. You will, then, never get a sense of self by standing still, as it were, and making everything revolve around your needs and interests. Unless you are willing to experience the loss of options and the individual limitations that comes from being in committed relationships, you will remain out of touch with your own nature and the nature of things. In many other places in this volume, I've traced out how impossible it is to stay fully human if you refuse the cost of forgiveness, the substitutional exchange of love, and the confinements of community... this world was not created by a God who is only an individual, nor is it the emanation of an impersonal force... We believe the world was made by a God who is a community of persons who have loved each other for all eternity. You were made for mutually self-giving, other-directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made... The universe is understood as a dance of beings united by energies binding yet distinct, like planets orbiting stars, like tides and seasons, "like atoms in a molecule, like the tones in a chord, like the living organisms on this earth, like the mother with the baby stirring in her body." The love of the inner life of the Trinity is written all through it. Creation is a dance!" (selected from pages 215-217, 219 of "The Reason for God").

Another book I'll suggest if I haven't already on this blog..."Searching for God Knows What" by Donald Miller! It's amazing! (For those of you who have read "Blue Like Jazz," this is 10 times better!

Photo Assisting, NC Visit, Church, and other thoughts

So, I've been out here in Los Angeles for almost 4 months now. So far, I've worked with Jim Wright (www.jimwrightphotography.com), Jerry Avenaim (www.avenaim.com), and Michel Comte (www.michelcomte.org). I have worked on a shoot for Cigar Aficionado, Ok! Magazine, German Vogue, and GQ. I have met the guys from Entourage, the cast of Glee, Lo Bosworth and Amanda Seyfried. It's been so much fun! I love photo assisting...everything about it...even the heavy lifting! (Hey, I need to tone up these arms anyway!)

I haven't gotten any photo jobs for almost 3 weeks now and was starting to get worried. But today, out of the blue, I got a call from a photographer that I've emailed a couple times and booked a job with him this week! It's another paying gig too, and I'm so excited about it!

The first week of June I went back to NC to visit family, see my high school small group girls for their graduation celebrations, and the Byers while they were back in the US. It was so awesome. :-) I love you guys! I was so busy but it was good to see everyone I could. Thanks for fitting me into your schedule while I was home!

Sunday I visited a new church and really liked it! I'm hoping to get plugged in there. It's called Mosaic, and I've visited the night service in Downtown LA before. I liked it, but it was a little too loud and felt more like a concert or a conference than church. This past Sunday morning I went to Mosaic's West LA church in Beverly Hills. It meets at Beverly Hills High School and is a smaller crowd. I've really grown to like smaller churches since I left Grace and started going to 514 and Spring Garden. West LA's Mosaic also has a lot of diversity and people around my age and in my walk of life.

I'm currently hunting for a new place to live. I want to find a place with cool female roommates and my own room! I've looked at a couple places, and sent out emails to a couple more. I really liked the first place I looked at...the girls were awesome and the place was too! I'm waiting to hear back from them...I'm supposed to hear back sometime this week.

I'm so excited about going to the Bahamas with my family and the Tinsley's in a month! It's going to be amazing! Also, NC people mark your calendars because I just booked my flight and my next visit will be Sept. 2nd - 8th (Wednesday night to Tuesday afternoon).

Love you all!

Steph

Wow

Regarding what Tom Brady says at 2:30...

I really find this heartbreaking. I hope and pray that the Lord will bring someone into his life that will show him there is more. It breaks my heart knowing there are so many people who don't know what real life is...or where it is found.

Ta-dah!

Been living out in Los Angeles for two months now, working and trying to get photo assisting jobs. Finally a break!

My friend Seth, who has been photo assisting out here for two years, hooked me up with several photographers he's worked with and I now have 3 jobs lined up as an intern. Two with Jim Wright this weekend, and one with Jerry Avenaim next weekend! The two this weekend are of the cast of Entourage (!!!) and the cast of Glee (a new show on Fox). The one with Jerry next weekend is for German vogue! So awesome! I'm trying not to freak out and hoping that I will make a good impression on set and they will all call me back for more jobs.

I'm so excited to watch the process, be involved, and learn! I can't wait to be working in a studio again. Seth has been a huge help in getting me this far, it really is all about who you know out here. Now it's up to me!