Pronouns and Thoughts in the Wrong Order

  When I got up this morning, I knew what I wanted to blog about. It was so much on my mind that I knew that God had a lesson in the experience for me. Let me set the stage.

   Last evening, my wife and I went down to the beach to catch the super moon as it rose out of the ocean. Supposedly it is a super moon because it is closer to the earth than usual, and I thought it might make a good picture. It was dark when we got there, so I took out my tripod, set it up, fixed the settings on the camera and waited for the moon to rise.

   Somewhere back in my camera past, I had heard that the manual focus setting is the best to use on these long shots in the dark because the camera's auto focus just does not have anything to key in on. So I put it on manual and took the shot after lining the moon up in the viewfinder. Looking at the image display after the shot, it looked pretty good.

   After snapping several as the moon rose into the low clouds on the horizon, we went home. Going straight to my computer, I downloaded the pics and got a closer look at what I had captured. I knew the scene was colorful and graphic, and I could not wait to see how it came out.

   The thumbnails looked good and seemed to capture the scene as I remembered it, but as I put the different takes into the develop module and played with them, I noticed, as I zoomed in on the moon, that it was slightly out of focus. All the shots I had taken turned out the same way. What a waste of a good opportunity!

   Then, this morning, I thought about the lessons from all of this, even before I read any Scripture.

Lessons like:

   Know all the settings that you need to use, not just some and guess the others....

   My life can get out of focus just like my image results....

   Regret over wasted opportunities....

   All of these were good and applicable, so could I find something in the verses this morning that I could use to fit them in? Like so many things in my life, I knew what I wanted to do, and I just wanted God to be on board. A verse from the readings would put His stamp of approval on my ideas.

   Then this verse popped out of Psalm 97:

"All worshipers of images are put to shame"

   I had put the cart before the horse. I took my own ideas and asked God to make them His. I was worshipping my ideas and not Him, placing my images, as it were, in first place ahead of everything else.

   You may think the picture above looks pretty good, but if you have the ability to look at it in detail, you will see that it is not a good representation of the scene at the beach.

   Just like my life sometimes......

   My prayer does not need to be "God, take my thoughts and make them Yours". I've got the pronouns in the wrong places.

   God, please make Your thoughts mine today.