This week Auburn seemed to be lucky to squeak out a win over an unranked 1-2 Tennessee team, but a win is a win, and 14-12 is a win. The remaining games are not going to get much easier, and next week what would seem like an easy game now seems to be a tough conference game against an undefeated Vanderbilt team. This week the game was played at 2:30 on CBS and was sunny and hot, but still made for a few good photo opportunities. Below are some of my favorite from the game. The first shot above is a hand off to Ben Tate (#44).
If you have photos from the game I would love to see them… please post a comment below so we can take a look. Hopefully there won’t be to many more really hot, full sun, games left, it should cool off down here sooner or later. See you here next week for Vanderbilt.
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It seems that every day since Cindy Wall [AU press release] died I have found out more and more about what a great person she was and how much she meant to so many people. Yesterday there was a beautiful memorial service for Cindy at Cornerstone United Methodist Church in Auburn where many people shared what an impact she had with the Auburn Athletics department and the Auburn students in general. Today during the Auburn vs Tennessee football game, Auburn University has said they are going to fly the traditional pre-game flight of either Nova or Spirit (sorry, don’t know which it is today), one of the eagles in the Auburn Raptor Center, in honor and memory of Cindy.
I don’t actually recall Auburn doing anything like this before but I am sure they have. Either way, it is a great show of how much Cindy meant to so many people at the Auburn Athletics department. Below is an image from her celebration service at CUMC. I will be at the game today and will post the images of the game later tonight (hopefully). Let’s hope the Tigers fare better against Tennessee than they did against LSU last week.
[Update] The game yesterday was hot and loud but fun… the pregame did have a special memorial to Cindy Wall and the photo is posted below. The stadium announcer did say the Auburn University eagle (Nova) was flying in her honor that day, and I took a quick photo of the AUHD sign as Nova flew.
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Last night, Encounter was intense to say the least. It was hard hitting truth and was very powerful. I can’t speak for last year, but this week was probably the most intense gathering this year, and many students were moved by the events of the evening. To me, it seemed like a very vertical night, lifting straight up to God the few hours of worship, study, and music. It was that way with the photos I took last night as well.
For some reason I took a good percentage of vertical images last night and in keeping with the theme, all the images below are vertically oriented this time. To see the entire shoot from last night please visit the Grace Campus Ministry with Encounter gallery [the full set of images should be uploaded by 12-1pm today]. On a side note, I did finally get to meet an online friend of mine, Stephen DeVries, who had just returned from a documentary trip to Haiti. It was great to meet you Stephen, I hope we can get together again real soon.
So what made last night more intense than other nights? I think it was just the atmosphere of the week. Grace showed a moving video about a boy named Eliot (see Creative Chaos 28 // Dear Eliot Video, 99 Balloons, and Brave Parents), and half the people in the room were moved to tears. After some scripture, Matt Dean (seen below) told the story and testimony of Cindy Wall who passed away on Wednesday. Cindy worked in the Auburn Athletics department as a trainer for 17 years, and it wasn’t until Matt started telling the story again did I realize that some on campus probably knew who she was, but may not have known the whole story. I took the image above of Matt speaking about her life’s most wonderful testimony.
The image you see on the screen in the upper left was one I took the night of her baptism. She has such pure joy on her face, and I had seen the photo many times before, yet it wasn’t until I looked at the image on the screen and heard the reaction from the students that it hit me. She was here and gone in my life in a blink of an eye and her life was now a testimony of faith to these students, who were now grieving.
Life is not always fun and games (although I try to make it that way) and there are needed nights like this to show real examples of living faith, to students who may not have a direction or a faith in Jesus. The difference in life and death, and the faith, hope, and love of Jesus could be found and felt last night. It had nothing to do with the video, the photo, the music, or the people involved, but the presence of the Lord in the house.
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What an exhausting weekend last Saturday was for many people, and a 16-21 loss makes it a bit longer. I normally have this post up on the same night as the football game but with everything going on this week, this is as good as it gets this time. The Auburn vs LSU game started very very early for me with ESPN Gameday and through to the final shots of the stadium as people left the game (see Fans Exit Jordan-Hare Stadium After a Long Day // Auburn 21 LSU 26). So here are some of the photos from the day. You can view the full gallery of images from the Auburn vs LSU game on the Auburn vs LSU 2008 gallery. Images are being loaded into that gallery right now and should have about 40 photos of the day later tonight. For now, here are a few of my favorites.
Let’s hope that this week’s game against Tennessee goes better than LSU. I will make a quick prediction that we will see some of Kodi Burns this week, but of course that is just a guess. It was a real heartbreaking loss to LSU, and the first time the home team had lost that game since 1999. It wasn’t from lack of trying, the guys played their hearts out as well, we just fell a few first downs short (among other things). Hope you enjoy the photos.
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This is my post for Creative Chaos // 28 (see also guidelines) over at Ragamuffin Soul for this week (which isn’t published quite yet over there but will be soon). If you haven€™t participated in Creative Chaos yet there is always time to jump in. It is a great tool to learn some of the new and innovative ways other churches and groups are being creative in their faith. Even if you don€™t post, just reading through a few of them is a real eye opener of what is done around the country and world in worship.
I am a little late for this video, it has been going around the Internet as of late, but I thought there might be a few of my readers that hadn’t actually seen it yet. I watched it again for about the fourth time as it was shown to the students at Auburn for Encounter last night. It hit me again when talking to a friend of mine at Encounter before the music started when he asked me if I had a son? How old is he, where does he live, what does he do. Thanks for asking Matt, I do, his name is Bryan, and his son’s name is William and he just turned three years old a few days ago (HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLIAM).
99 Balloons // Dear Eliot Video
The first time I watched 99 balloons was with my good friend b/ in the middle of a busy day when Jack posted about it on his blog. I couldn’t really comprehend it’s worth at the time (although it did bring b/ to tears). It has been that kind of week this week and this video really goes right along with the testimony of our friend Cindy Wall but told by a 3 month old baby born with a condition called Trisomy 18 called Eliot Hartman Mooney. The name of the video is called 99 Balloons and is narrated by a father who marks off each day as it begins on video with “Dear Eliot”.
I am using it for my creative chaos post because the parents of Eliot chose to show the world how much they love their son, in the most creative way, with a really cool video and some photos. It reminded me of my son Bryan with his son William (shown above) who just turned three a few days ago.å William is the coolest three year old in the world and I know if you ask his daddy he would tell you the same thing.
There is much joy in this video, especially shown through the parents, because the Lord was part of the parents life in a very meaningful way… but today, it is my creative chaos post.
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I am writing this blog post right now because I am not really sure what else to do. Today I got the shocking news that Cindy Wall (of Auburn Alabama) had passed away and is now with our Lord. This is the same person that I wrote about in my last blog post, (called Skype Video Baptism from Innovate08 in South Bend to Auburn) who had blessed all of us so much through her baptism. [To see the full slideshow of photos from the baptism, click Cindy Wall Skype Baptism gallery.]
This truly had to be God’s will and timing. Something so hard to explain and so hard to comprehend could be nothing else than God’s raw will expressed through her life, shown as a witness to us all, that there is never a good time to put off God’s work. At this point it is so hard to process the information and put into words the flood of thoughts that come to mind.
Over the past several months I have written many blog posts (like my mother-in-law Georgia Christal, musician Matthew Butler, and others like Steven Curtis Chapman, Prayers for His Family, Family Testimony, Bronner Burgess Drowns in Pool) about individuals that have come into my life in one form or another and then died, and I am then again reminded that we are NOT in charge of this world, God is. After the last few posts about Matthew Butler and after hearing from his mother and his widowed wife, I wrote Is it Really Important to Ask God Why Anymore?, and that is a little how I feel right now. Why bother asking why, it isn’t up to us, no matter how hard we try to make the world conform to our life, instead of us conforming to God’s will for our life.
Thank You Cindy for the Time You Spent With Me
I spoke with Cindy on Sunday morning about the baptism and I told her how much it really meant to the people involved, and me personally. The conversation we had was something I meant to tell her on Friday after the baptism, but I am so glad I did on Sunday.
Now, her actions to follow Jesus in baptism on Friday was something so huge, so important, that none of us could have possibly comprehended at the time. Any one person could have said no, could have decided it was to much trouble, our pastor could have said he didn’t have time (after all, he was in another state), and any number of other things could have kept the baptism from happening. Yet, the people involved, in another state, said yes, we will follow the Lord.
Much of my conversation with Cindy before the baptism was about our preconceived notions of “church” and “a baptism”, and why it doesn’t always have to be like the traditions of history. Her baptism was to be a party. She wanted her baptism to be a celebration, which meant, a party. In the same sentence, she told me she wanted her baptism to be a party, just like her funeral. Of course when you are talking to a young person, about to be baptized, the second part just flew by my ears without much notice.
She took the time to talk to me, tell me about her experiences, and invite me into one of the most exciting times in her life and to that, all I can say is thank you.
If the Lord is Pressing You to Do Something, Don’t Wait
There is no greater example of a life in submission to the Lord than this. If He is doing the same to you, don’t wait, our time here is short. It puts into perspective some of the people I interact with each day, some of the projects I am involved with, and what importance each has in my life. It does makes me think about the things I did today… what did you do? I spent several hours working with b/ this morning, and then spent the rest of the day with my wife. Not every day goes like today, but It was time well spent.
Tonight I felt compelled to spend some time and write something about Cindy’s story and the witness of faith her life now represents. Tomorrow, when I re-read this, it may not make any sense to me at all, but her life was special to many, and it was to me as well, thanks Cindy.
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Late last week I posted about one of the most incredible baptisms I have ever seen (see Creative Chaos 27 // Skype Video Baptism from Innovate08 in Indiana), a video conference baptism. Most of the staff of our church went to the Innvate08 Conference in South Bend Indiana, while a requested baptism had to take place on that Friday, when they were all gone. In comes Skype Video. With the staff in South Bend, and all of us down here in Auburn hooked up the required links and away everything went.
To see the full slideshow of photos from the baptism, click Cindy Wall Skype Baptism gallery.
What was really amazing to me about this baptism, and what made it so special, had nothing to do with the technology at all. The personalized value of this baptism, the people it affected, and the time that our Pastor was able to devote to an individual single baptism made it one of the most special baptisms I have seen. It was a celebration, as it should be, something that was not rushed through, and a baptism that was reflective upon the meaning of our dying to self. Instead of having to deal with time constraints of a Sunday morning worship hour, everyone was able to slow down and take a little more time. Rusty read the following scripture was read:
2 Corinthians 5:14-19 // 14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. 16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
After the actual baptism took place, we hung up with the staff in Indiana (see other posts wow and the baptism) and we were all able to share a meal together. Later I talked with Cindy and told her that I understood this baptism was special to her, but what she did by doing this, was allow so many other people to participate in a great blessing. There were perhaps 25-30 other people that made this event special, and I know that everyone that participated was greatly blessed by the whole thing.
What else could anyone ask for in a baptism. It certainly was special. If you would like to see the video (from the South Bend, Indiana end) you can view it below.
