Jesus' Birthday!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas; I sure did!

We all have traditions that we do every year; one of my favorites is Jesus' birthday cake. This is a special cake because the way it is made is very symbolic.

^ The big red candle represents Jesus, the light of the world. The candle sits in the middle of a Star of David, showing Jesus's lineage, and the cake is round, symbolizing the earth. The hearts represent believers around the world, and the white frosting represents Jesus' righteousness covering us.

^ The bottom, dark layer represents the sin of the world. The red layer represents Jesus' atoning sacrifice for our sins, and the green layer represents new growth in Him.

We read the Christmas story, sing Silent Night and light our candles off of the big candle, showing that we are to take Jesus' Light into the world! We also sing the Happy Birthday Song, with different lyrics:

On the first Christmas day

From the Father above

Came the little Lord Jesus

To show us God's love!

Happy birthday to You!

Happy birthday to You!

We love you dear Jesus!

Happy birthday to You!

A wonderful reminder of the reason we celebrate Christmas, and a delicious one too! :-)

~Mac

My Most Favoritest Job Ever!

I love recording, producing, and engineering music, ESPECIALLY when I get paid to do it! A few weeks ago I got a project from a young singer-songwriter. Her dad decided to give her the Christmas present of recording one of her songs at higher quality and with other instruments. My name came up and I got the job! I recorded her acoustic guitar and vocal tracks last week and have finished the tracking of the other instruments. Now I'm in the mixing stage, and I'll hopefully be done by next week! Hopefully this will give me some more contacts and good reviews ;-)

~Mac

Rockin' Christmas Evening

Last week, we got to see the most rockin' Christmas concert ever - The Trans-Siberian Orchestra! Three hours of music, lights, lasers, fire, etc. 'Twas quite epic! :-)

^ Just a sample of the amazing light and video show

^ Lights, video, orchestra and vocal choir

^ One of my favorite parts - LASERS!

^ Yes, they did light the stage on fire - and we could feel the heat from our "nosebleed" (high up and far away) seats! They also beat-synced the fire on several occasions.

~Mac

Vita - Via Media

The rough translation of that is "life - the middle way".

It's one of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately. It seems as though everything in life, all our decisions, our beliefs, our opinions, is about finding some kind of Biblical, ethical, moral, or responsible middle ground between two extremes, neglecting neither.

Faith and works. Works and faith. Which is more important? Neither! One must have faith to be saved, but faith without works is dead.

One other thing that has become important in my life is future career choices. I have to find some kind of balance between doing what I love (music, audio and video production) and what I can use to best support my family. At times, these two interests seem to be in direct conflict - musicians and audio engineers have a hard time finding work and making money, but it seems like God has gifted me in those areas.

Balancing relationships and service with school and other personal pursuits is something that we must all deal with and decide about. It can be very hard to decide between building a relationship with friends or siblings and being "productive" and moving towards earning a degree.

How about you? How are you finding the Via Media?

~Mac