I hope everyone had a safe and sane Fourth of July. I enjoy taking photos of fireworks displays, and the City of Temecula put on an outstanding show at the Ronald Regan Sports Park this year. The fireworks and the music were a very good fit, and especially well timed.

Here are a few shots from my secret location at the sports park:

This post was originally hosted on my Blogger blog and was without a doubt the most popular post. A day doesn’t go by without someone somewhere in the world who’s looking for information on terebinth trees viewing this post…regardless of which search engine they’re using.

I get asked all the time “What is a terebinth tree?”  Or “Why Terebinth Tree?”  Or even “What is a ter…teri..tere..um, how do you say it?”

So I thought I’d finally answer that…

I was reading about Abraham in the Bible, and was wondering about the plain of Mamre where he pitched his tent.  Pitching his tent meant that he was putting down stakes there and was planning on staying a while.  In looking up the word plain, it can mean a large open space like a field.  It can also mean a wooded area.  My Bible has footnotes in it, and these footnotes indicated that there were terebinth trees in that plain.

It seems to me that pitching ones tent near a wooded place would be an excellent idea.  Not only do you have a ready supply of firewood, you could fix things in such a way that your house can be kept cool by the shade of the trees.  And where there are trees, there’s got to be water nearby, too.  What a good place to “put down roots.”

According to this Wikipedia article, the terebinth tree is a small tree or a large shrub.  This article in the Jewish Encyclopediasays that the terebinth is similar to an oak in that both can be “large, strong trees.”  Oak trees are very hardy trees, and their roots go down deep.  They can survive for a very long time, too.  The Santa Rosa Plateau, which is close to where I live, is dotted with many oak trees that are hundreds of years old.

In our own lives, we seek for a good place to put down our roots.  Like an oak tree, the roots of our lives go down deep.  The feelings that we have for our children and families also go down deep.  Are not genealogies also called “Family Trees?”

Those special days in our lives, especially when a couple commits themselves to each other before the Lord, also go down deep. Days such as this are filled with emotion, meaning and purpose.

So, this should give you an idea of what a terebinth tree is, and why I choose that name for a venture where I have a goal to capture memories that last a lifetime.

Peace.

Just about everyone’s heard about those wildfires out in California. Fortunately, none are close to us. This is what the full moon looked like on October 25 through the haze of smoke.

Creepy.

Ryan is one of my son Matthew’s friends at church. Ryan is a really neat kid, and I’m glad and blessed that he’s in our Wednesday night Master Club class at church. I took Ryan’s school photo last week, and had found out that he was being baptized this Sunday. I had to bring my camera, and I’m glad that I did. It’s such a blessing to watch people you know getting baptized as a public testimony of their belief in Christ.

Anyway, here’s Ryan…

And here’s his baptism:

Down he goes….

Up he comes…

Woo hoo!