Words On Living

Summer Art Academy!

The classroom I had, was on the 2nd floor of an old unair-conditioned building.
I taught four 1.5 hour classes a day, I was also outside teaching too.

This past week, has been a wonderful blur of excitement. God's blessings are so abundant! It was my second year of teaching for the Summer Art Academy. There were 75+ students at the camp, 26 of them were mine for the week! I taught Basic Drawing & Urban Art - A fun class that covered the challenging basics of drawing, while working indoors/outdoors, using various tools to achieve detailed, realistic & stylized sketches. Students used ink, pencil & charcoal for their drawing mediums. We explored the campus grounds, sketching buildings and landscapes. I focussed primarily on teaching composition: good vs. poor, shading & dramatization,  developing a critical eye, learning perspective, being selective & creative, while having fun! 

I believe I had about as much fun as all the students did! Teaching to a group of kids aged 8-14 is fun & challenging. A lot of work too. I had a classroom to myself, were I did about 1/2 my teaching, the rest of the time I was outside on campus grounds teaching. It was truly amazing to be part of so many kid's lives, sharing the gift of art! 

Students working hard, drawing what they see: buildings, statues, landscapes, etc. exploring the beautiful campus. 

Talented young artists, sketching away! 

-GB

Ps. Here be a link to last year's post on the Academy. :)

Life Under the Beautiful Big Sky

Highlanders and their big shaggy heads. 

Misquotes literally ate me alive while I took this pic. 

The Beartooth Rocky Mountains, snowcapped during the summer. Lush foothills will turn brown soon. 

As the golden sun meets the horizon, rain falls from the sky. 

My good'ole dog of 14 years. 

    

A grand masterpiece painted across the heavens by the Creator. Words cannot express just beautiful this was. 

 

Busy bee in the garden. Macro lens. 

   

The Prickly Pear & my feet. Oh, happy, happy hot summer day!

Promise.

For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. (2 Corinthians 1:20)

If “all the promises of God find their Yes in [Jesus],” then to trust him now in the present is to believe that his promises will come true.

Those are not two separate faiths — trusting him, and believing in his promises. Believing in Jesus means believing that he keeps his word. Being satisfied in the crucified and risen Jesus now includes the belief that at every future moment, to all eternity, nothing will separate us from his love, or keep him from working all things together for good.

Putting it all together, I would say that the spiritual beauty we need to embrace is the beauty of God that will be there for us in the future, certified for us by the glorious grace of the past.

Photo:  I took this after a thunderstorm blew through... It was gorgeous. The air smelled so fresh. 

We need to taste now the spiritual beauty of God in all his past achievements — especially the death and resurrection of Christ for our sins — and in all his promises. Our confidence and trust must be in all that God himself will be for us in the next moment, and in the next month, and in the endless ages of eternity — “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

It is he and he alone who will satisfy the soul in the future. And it is the future that has to be secured and satisfied with spiritual riches of glory, if we are to live the radical Christian lives that Christ calls us to live here and now.

If our present enjoyment of Christ now — our present faith — does not have in it the Yes to all God’s promises, it will not embrace the power for radical service in the strength that God (in every future moment) will supply (1 Peter 4:11).

My prayer is that reflecting like this on the essence of faith will help us avoid superficial, oversimplified statements about believing the promises of God. It is a deep and wonderful thing. -Piper 

Radishes of June!

A fistful of flavor. 

Today my awesome lil brother & I pulled up all the radishes! It was a rewarding & worthwhile thing to do.  Had to get out my camera. ;) Already the garden is giving back to us! We harvested many; they came in all different shapes & sizes. The majority of the radishes were ping-pong-ball sized, with the exception of a few that were smaller, & some that were oblong & misshapen. Radishes apparently grow well in pots too; they are kid friendly / low maintenance veggies. It's truly amazing how a single minuscule seed can grow into a ripe, red, spicy radish. Yum. 

-GB