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I just returned from the Southwestern Photojournalism Conference in Nashville, and it sure was a great event. This event started well over two decades ago and is a gathering of photojournalists with an emphasis on the faith component of working in that field. \u00a0Over many years I made wonderful friends, brothers and sisters at this conference so after a five year absence it was great to return and be with them! \u00a0We had some marvelous fellowship and connected with a lot of fear freinds. \u00a0The students were great and we tried to help them in any way we could.<\/p>\n
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I spoke Saturday afternoon and as always I prayed the Holy Spirit would take over and apparently He did, we all were moved by what was shared under His insipration, all the glory goes to God! \u00a0It relieves all stress when you don’t need to take any credit!!!<\/p>\n
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I got home around 8:00 pm last evening to be greeted with a tv news report about multiple examples of how society is attacking Christians. \u00a0While I was not surprised, we are in a spiritual war after all, I must admit I went to church this morning agitated about the examples shared in this news report! \u00a0God has a way of getting us back on track! \u00a0While I was grasping at straws to find the right response to my anger over the criticism from the world, our guest speaker at church offered a more modern, cut to the chase, definition of Grace and Mercy.<\/p>\n
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Here goes; \u00a0 \u00a0Grace is when we get what we don’t deserve, Mercy is when we don’t get what we do deserve!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I went to the alter to pray for a freind and while kneeling and praying for him God opened my eyes to the solution to my dilemma. \u00a0In spite of suggestions that Jesus doesn’t talk to us, He certainly did to me this morning (and has for years!) \u00a0While I was stewing about the mistreatment of fellow Christians, Jesus reminded me that even though He was God’s Son, and part of the Holy Trinity, men beat Him, spat on Him, mocked Him, threw dice \u00a0gambling for his cloths and nailed Him to the cross to die an excruciatingly painful death, yet, He looked down at these people and said, \u00a0“Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Case closed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Blessings,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n the pilgrim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I just returned from the Southwestern Photojournalism Conference in Nashville, and it sure was a great event. This event started well over two decades ago and is a gathering of photojournalists with an emphasis on the faith component of working in that field. \u00a0Over many years I made wonderful friends, brothers and sisters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19671,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19670\/revisions\/19671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}