I Didn't See You There! Picasa is a photo album application by Google. It has a special feature, name tags, that uses face matching technology to organize photos by the people in them! It starts by finding a face in a picture and asking who it is. So far, it is just the same as tediously labeling pictures one at a time. But then, as soon as you identify one photo, it finds other photos that look like the person you tagged. When you then tag the ones it guessed correctly, and it reveals even more! I was swept away as pictures of my family and friends were harvested from acres of photos. The more I picked, the more the computer found! Different years, weights!?, glasses, hairstyles,(even the bald months!) were named and claimed as my loved ones.

by Pietro Bellini on Flickr

Now I can find my loved ones in the sea of photos spanning years. It all started by picking a loved one out of one photo scene.

I believe this works in discerning the face of God in real life. Once you start identifying God in your life, God sightings increase. You learn the various ways that God is active, bringing his face out of the background into awareness.

Hope you have a picture perfect day, and find the face of God ever increasingly in it.

Stop. Look. God!

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. - Psalm 139:7-12

The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This work by J. Christy Ramsey is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Last night I was installed as President of Akron Kiwanis by our International President Sylvester Neal Among other things I got a ring and a chance for remarks to the club. I share them here:

We believe that children and their communities benefit from the efforts of a proficient group of caring and concerned individuals.

"You're with Akron Kiwanis?! Come on in." That is what Auburn Sandstrom said when I obeyed member Olivia Wakeling's direction to go to the hospital and help her after her husband's Chuck Sandstrom's horrific tramatic brain injury that put him into a coma. Auburn didn't know me. But she knew that when help is needed Kiwanians show up .

"You don't have to sign in." the therapist at Children's Hospital told me as she waved me past the line of parents and children, "the Kiwanians are down front." They were there singing Christmas carols while hurting and recovering children came in to be visited by the Kiwanis Santa who brought presidents from the club to each of them. When children are hurting, Kiwanians step up.

On the very worst night of their young lives, after brutal personal assualt, when their very clothes are taken from them for evidence, young girls are upheld by a grant from the Akron Kiwanis Foundation. Simple, decent, new clothes are given to them to get them home with dignity. When you are knocked down,Kiwanians lift you up.

Show up. Step up. Lift up.

Kiwanis is a global organization of volunteers dedicated to changing the world one child and one community at a time. As your president I am dedicated to giving every member experiences like I and others who have gone before me have had of changing the world for the benefit of children and our community.



This work by J. Christy Ramsey is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Why Can't Everything Be Easy? Years before it was a video game controller, my wife wanted to use a balance board in her work as a physical therapist. Standing on a board supported only in the center would require the clients to practice and improve their balancing skills. She asked the hospital maintenance workers to make her one. When they asked for a drawing of what she wanted, she sketched a wide flat board with narrow thick board attached under it along the center. The workers objected to the design. They patiently explained to her that it would wobble when someone stood on it. It was all she could do to stop the woodworkers from adding supports on either end. They were very dubious when she told them it was designed to wobble and be tough to stand on.

from rosefirerising on Flickr

When I'm wondering why my life is wobbling, I remember the balance board that "needed" extra legs for stability. Instead of cursing the lack of supports, maybe I need to learn to balance better.

Boasting When Knocked Off Balance

...but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.- Romans 5:3b-5

The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This work by J. Christy Ramsey is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Luke 15:1-10

God is looking for the lost. If you're lost, God is looking for you!

This message is available as a podcast recorded live at our worship service, so the sound quality is less than heavenly even if the content is. Click the podcast image to listen now or right click the image and choose "Save As" to save this message in mp3 file format on your computer for playing later.

by Puzzler4879 on Flicker (c) Some Rights Reserved



This work by J. Christy Ramsey is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Photo by Michael Chritton/Akron Beacon Journal

Our Church sign was in the Akron Beacon Journal, the Youngstown Vindicator and Channel 5 news (via the Ohio News Network) on on September 9th.

Besides our own Church tweets on twitter, we also were tweeted by the Presbyterian Church

Links to the articles appeared from Columbus, Ohio to around the world in Singapore.

Sinfully proud of the good folks at Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church.