Well, the good news is the wedding shoot yesterday went well. It was an exhausting 11-hour day, but the photographer was lovely to work with and it seemed to be a success.

I missed out the ceremony and most of the reception. However, I went in for part of it, as the maid and man of honour and bride and groom were giving their speeches, and then the first dance between bride and groom.

It was beautiful, there's no denying. I had that irresistible smile on my face that comes from watching the heart-touching beauty of a man and woman pledge their love for each other and join their lives together. No matter how many times you see it, it never grows old.

But something struck me as I watched it, and today as I was thinking about it again:

This is not the ultimate.

For the world, if you don't know God, and even for many Christians, the love between a man and a woman is the highest, the greatest, the most ultimate thing that it is possible to experience. In terms of love, in terms of relationship, in terms of life experiences, it is the apex.

Except it's not.

As beautiful, as wonderful, as glorious, as miraculous as the love between a man and a woman is, it is only a shadow. It is only a reflection of the true love, that is, the love between God and his people.

The apostle Paul talks about marriage in Ephesians, and he concludes by saying, "This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church." (Ephesians 5:32) We are told numerous times in Scripture that we are the bride of Christ (Revelation 19:7). Jesus is called the bridegroom (Matthew 9:15).

Marriage is only for this life. Marriage to Jesus will be for eternity. We will be his forever, in a way and in a love that we can only begin to comprehend now.

But this is not just a word trick, calling something by a name to make it seem like something it's really not. The love between Jesus and his bride truly is the greatest, the most satisfying, the most fulfilling love we can ever possibly experience.

And we are meant to experience it, in a way and to an intensity that fills us up in a way that the relationship with a spouse, no matter how good, never can.

Paul wrote to the Ephesians:

"I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:17-19)

The good news is that as single Christians (as Paul was) we have full and complete access to this love, just as married Christians do. We are not incomplete. We are not lacking. We are not second-level, or inferior. We have the same access to Jesus' love, a love that fills and that satisfies beyond compare, a love that is the ultimate love, the true love, the love of which married love is only a shadow.

I pray that you would experience it. If you're not, ask for the Holy Spirit. Abandon yourself before God. Cry out for him, until you are filled with that love, the love that surpasses human knowledge, the love that brings ultimate joy.

This is going to be one of those silly, inconsequential, "my life" blog posts.

I have my first "real" professional wedding photography gig tomorrow. Actually, I won't be doing much shooting, just helping the photographer with things like transferring photos to her laptop and carrying stuff. I do have to shoot the guys getting ready, but other than that I can just shoot as I want for my own portfolio. The budget doesn't cover a full second shooter, so I'm just there as a gofer and to shoot for fun as I please.

That's a lot less pressure. However, as much as I've done this before, I have to admit there are a few more butterflies than normal at the idea of this being my first "real", paid gig. I tried for a long time to secure assistant wedding photog jobs, with no success. This one came out of the blue, through a friend of mine who is a pro photographer and recommended me to the woman I'll be assisting.

So I'm pretty excited about that. Who knows where it might lead? I'm hoping to be able to get more weekend gigs to boost the income and to get some much-needed professional experience on my photography resume. Plus, it'll just be fun. I love mucking about with photography anytime.

Recently, thanks to a friend of mine, I discovered the music of Phil Wickham. I don't know much about him personally, but I do know that his music is amazing. It's worship, and when you listen to it, you can hear the heart of God. You can feel how beautiful Jesus is.

He has a full CD of live worship music available for download from his website: http://philwickham.com/singalong. The only "catch" is that you have to sign up for his email newsletter—not a bad deal. I would highly recommend downloading the album. The first and last songs alone, "Beautiful" and "True Love" are worth it, not to mention everything in between.

The files are in m4a format. If, like mine, your mp3 player won't support m4a, there are lots of free programs available to download that will convert them to mp3.

Listen, enjoy, and be blessed.

I'm in love. And he's tall, dark, and handsome.

No, he's not a guy. Or at least, not a human guy.

Yesterday, I went to the Canadian National Exhibition (The Ex, or the CNE, as it's more commonly known) with a new photographer buddy. It was a good time.

But without a doubt the highlight of the Ex, and worth the price of admission alone, plus more, was an aerialist/acrobatic/musical/equestrian exhibition called Hippike, held in Ricoh Coliseum.

Supposedly it's a reenactment of some gypsy legend. Whatever. I was there for the horses. I didn't even watch the acrobatics, unless there was no horse in the arena.

There were some amazingly gorgeous horses. A Friesian. Several Arabs. Lots of Spanish/Portuguese horses. A few of indeterminate breed, including a splashy paint used for trick riding.

However, I fell totally in love with one in particular. A tall, dark bay with one white sock on his left hind foot, Spanish or Portuguese. He was simply stunning: perfect conformation, perfectly arched head and neck carriage, perfect collection, gorgeous, floaty, perfect movement.

I wanted him. I fell in love with him.

I want to know all about him. Name? Age? Where does he live? For goodness' sake, can I buy one of his babies? (Just kidding, those horses go for $20,000 and more).

My photog buddy asked if I'd spend $500 for a weekend riding him. I said sure, if I had it, and if I had a trainer to work with me. I've never really done much dressage, and riding a horse like that would be a bit like putting a teenage learning driver into a Formula 500 race.

But my, he was gorgeous. I'm still hyperventilating.

Does anyone, who might stumble on this post randomly, know anything about that horse?

Last night, I was sitting outside knitting. I was waiting until a specified time when I was supposed to meet someone at their apartment, so, having arrived early I did what I always do when I have a knitting project on the go and a bit of spare time: pulled it out and started working.

Suddenly I heard, "That is the cutest thing I have ever seen!"

I looked up, confused. An extremely good-looking Chinese guy was standing there smiling at me. Tall, well built, very cute.

"What, knitting?" I laughed.

"Knitting in front of an apartment building. What are you doing here?"

We started chatting and exchanging flirtatious banter. I have to admit it was a bit flattering: it's been a long time since a cute guy flirted with me.

"So, tell me something about yourself," he invited.

"Well, I knit."

"I know that! Tell me something I don't know."

I paused for a moment. I had a choice. Do I tell him the most important thing about myself, something guaranteed to stop the flirting and frighten him away, or do I give in to the flattery and say something lighthearted and inconsequential?

"I'm a Christian," I said.

His smile froze. He went silent. He looked at me warily.

"I thought I'd tell you the most scary thing about me," I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

"That is scary," he said. "Are you, like, a hardcore Christian? I've had a lot of conversations with hardcore Christians, because I'm a Buddhist."

"Oh yeah?" I asked him a few questions about his Buddhism, and he asked me about my Christianity. I told him what it meant to me to be a Christian. I left him with a card from my church with my phone number on it.

Somehow, I don't think I'll be hearing from him. But hopefully, the conversation meant something more than a random flirt. Hopefully, God's on his case and tracking him down. I don't know. I prayed for him.

Sometimes being a Christian is harder than others. Like, scaring away the first cute guy in ages to flirt with you by talking with him about Jesus. It hardly qualifies as suffering for the gospel. Nonetheless, I have to admit that there was a little twinge of regret. Ah well. Maybe I can start up a ministry: street evangelism to cute guys. With knitting.

Recently I saw a doctor who ordered some tests. I showed up at the laboratory on the dot of eight yesterday morning, after fasting the obligatory twelve hours, figuring I’d get it out of the way before work.

After a bit of a wait I was called in and sat down. A nurse tied a tourniquet above my elbow and had me make a fist. She slid the needle under the skin inside my elbow, and extracted a vial of blood. She then proceeded to draw a second vial of blood, at which point I decided it would be a good idea to look away. My last thought was, “I’m getting lightheaded, maybe I should tell her…”

“…Susanna, Susanna!”

Someone was calling my name from a great distance. Out of a confused dark haze I opened my eyes and slowly focused to see the faces of two nurses peering at me from above. I was lying on the floor in front of the chair I’d previously been sitting in.

“Susanna, can you hear me?” They’d put a cold wet cloth on my forehead and were fanning my face.

It was a few seconds before I was able to nod.

“Have you ever fainted before?” one of them asked.

It was easier to raise two fingers than to answer verbally. Finally I got the words out. “Twice before.”

“Next time you get blood drawn, you should tell us that you pass out so we can have you lie down,” she said, somewhat accusingly.

“It’s never happened when I’ve given blood before.”

“If we help you up, do you think you feel well enough to go into the next room and lie down?”

I nodded, so they each took a hand and pulled me up. One shoe had somehow come off and they’d pulled my cardigan off. They carted my things and me into the next room to lie on an examining room bed. “If you need anything call us…”

I lay there for several minutes, feeling weak and shaky. The wet cloth was still on my forehead, and I began to feel violently cold. I reached for my cardigan and pulled it back on, and eventually was able to sit up. One of the nurses passed by. “I think I feel well enough to go,” I told her.

She advised me to go across the street to Starbucks, buy an orange juice, and eat breakfast.

I passed the rest of the day feeling somewhat lightheaded and peculiar, but didn’t faint again.

Next time I have blood taken, I’ll make sure to give them adequate warning.

Recently I read a book by Bill Johnson entitled Face to Face With God: The ultimate quest to experience his presence. It's an excellent book, and I recommend it.

One statement impacted me more than any other in the book:

"God's love for people is beyond comprehension and imagination. He is for us, not against us. God is good 100 percent of the time." (p. 3, emphasis added)

"[I]f I had to pick one word to describe the nature of God revealed in Christ, it is that He is good. I never realized how controversial the subject of the nature of God could be until I began teaching week after week that God is good, always." (p. 103)

This simple premise shocked me, not only because it is profound, but because I realized I don't really believe it. Most of the time, even if I'm not outright angry at God and convinced that he is out to get me, the suspicion lurks strongly in my mind that mixed up in God's "good" motives are motives to punish, hurt, or damage me. If I really give myself over to him, I can't trust that the results will be in my favour.

Bill Johnson admits the difficulty of this teaching:

"While most believers hold the belief [that God is good] as a theological value...they struggle in light of the difficulties all around us. Many have abandoned the idea altogether, thinking it doesn't have any practical application. The hardest part is saying that He's always good. Some will say He is mysteriously good, which is about the same as saying He's good, but not as we think of goodness." (p.103)

The more I have thought about it, the more convinced I have become that central to a quest for the presence of God, central to giving up everything to follow Jesus, is a basic and settled conviction in our hearts that God is good. Not just good, but 100% good, 100% of the time.

How can we abandon ourselves to him, how can we completely believe and obey him, unless we believe that?

One of Satan's very first temptations in the garden of Eden, the doubt he sowed into Eve's mind to convince her to disobey God, was the idea that God was not good:

The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:2-5)

The ugly but plausible lie behind what the serpent was saying was this: God is holding out on you. He knows that this will be good for you, and that's why he's forbidding it. If you take things into your own hands, if you go your own way, forgetting what God says, you will experience what is truly good, what God doesn't want you to have and what you'll miss out on if you obey him.

Eve fell for it. And ever since, generations down the line, every single human being has fallen for it too.

What Jesus Christ came to reveal, and what reconciliation to God is all about, is that God is actually good. That following him reaps ultimate rewards, both in this lifetime and the next.

And yet, we struggle to believe that. Someone far from God doesn't believe it at all: a basic hatred and mistrust of God keeps them shaking their fists from a distance, even if unconsciously. But many Christians probably feel the same way I do: a deep and stubborn suspicion that the love of God is a happy lie, that a benevolent Father can't possibly be true, that ditching the treasures of this life in favour of treasure in heaven won't ultimately pay off.

We follow Jesus because we feel we have no choice. We know he's the truth. But disappointments, unhappy circumstances, far-off things that are starting to look less like promises and more like cruel bait, keep us in a miserable state of depression, discouragement, fear, and fruitlessness. We turn to things we know we shouldn't in an effort to stem the demanding tide of pain.

If God is good, why? Why this circumstance in my life? Why this thing that I want so badly and can't have? Why this stuff that doesn't make any sense?

There's no easy answer to that. I can't promise that a belief in the goodness of God will reap quick and easy solutions to the disappointments and hurts of life. I still struggle with questions about things that are currently ongoing in my life, and I don't have any guarantee that I will have an answer soon, or indeed, any answer in this lifetime.

But key to overcoming the hurt, disappointment, fear, and fruitlessness is a little thing called faith.

We have a choice when confronted with our thoughts, our feelings, our circumstances, and the enemy's lies:

Do we believe God?

God has said, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28, emphasis added)

As believers, that's a shining light of truth, a promise God has given us that encompasses all circumstances in our life, both "good" and "bad".

The belief that God is out to harm us or to hold out on us is a lie.

We know the heart and the character of God as revealed in Jesus. We have the promises of God. What do we turn to when hurt or disappointment threatens to overwhelm us? We will be overwhelmed, unless we believe in the promises of God.

I'm not saying that bad things won't happen to us. Promises that we will suffer are sown through the whole New Testament. Following God definitely does not guarantee that we will get what we want in this life, or that it will be easy. There are no guarantees.

Except for the presence, the power, and the love of God. And somehow, that's enough to make us "more than conquerors", as Paul says (Romans 8:37).

Paul knew what he was talking about. He had suffered and lost more than any of us probably ever will. And yet, he could triumphantly state his all-conquering belief in the goodness and the love of God.

Don't sell yourself short. Disappointments will happen. Hurts will happen. God tells us he uses them to make us mature and complete and shape us into the image of Jesus (James 1:2-4; Hebrews 12:1-13). The question is, will we believe him?

I have gone through many hurts in my life. Sometimes I've felt that God wanted to make me into a test case for suffering! (Which, of course, is not true). Looking back at my major disappointments, I can trace God's hand and see how he has used each one to draw me into new stages in my relationship with him and deal with sin issues. What I thought would destroy me has ended up turning out for my good. Even if, and when, those things were not good in themselves!

With that experience, and with God's promises, I can look at the current hurts and disappointments in my life and say, "God, I don't understand this. I don't like this. This hurts. I don't know why you've allowed it. I wish it could be another way. But I know with total certainty that you will work this out for my good, no matter how it ends up. Therefore, I can walk forward with faith and confidence and continue trusting you and doing what you have called me to do."

Faith in God's goodness does not mean denying, ignoring, or minimizing the pain. It doesn't mean saying that everything that happens to us is good. We live in a sinful, fallen, evil world. Bad stuff can and does happen. People sin, and they sin against us.

But faith in God does mean a settled conviction that, in the life of a believer, God both can and will turn out everything, including the bad, the sinful, the ugly, the painful, for our good, because he's promised. It means a conviction that our perspective is limited and faulty, and God's is eternal and perfect. What from our time-bound, human viewpoint looks only like destruction, from God's heavenly vantage point looks like an opportunity to display his grace and his goodness. It means believing what we cannot yet see, which, after all, is the very definition of faith (Hebrews 11:1).

With faith like that, nothing can shake us.

God help me, and all of us, to believe.

My "vacation" in New England ended up being more than just that. In the timing of God, it ended up being a bit of an ambush.

We are called to live for one thing. As Christians, that one thing is following Jesus and knowing God. It's living to see his kingdom come and his love and power manifest on earth, no matter what the cost to ourselves.

It is easy to become sidetracked from that goal. A lot of us, for a lot of the time, even though we're saved, aren't really living for that goal. We're taken up with the things of this life: jobs, taking care of ourselves, family, hobbies, sports, whatever. We're saved and we're going to heaven, and we go to church on Sundays, but God and his kingdom are not our magnificent obsession. Our attention is captured by a million and one other things and our effectiveness for the kingdom is sabotaged.

It wasn't meant to be this way. Jesus said many hard things about the way we are supposed to live.

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels." (Luke 9:23-26)

It's a hard call. But it's what it means to be a Christian. Jesus never meant for us to live with anything less than total devotion, a passion for him and for the kingdom that consumes everything we are and everything we have to the point that we will give it all up and suffer anything to have him.

But there's another side to this perspective. Jesus also told this parable, one of my favourite passages in the whole Bible:

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all that he had and bought that field." (Matthew 13:44, emphasis added)

Whatever we give up for Jesus is more than made up for by what we gain. He is the treasure. He is the all-surpassing treasure that once we catch a glimpse of, will outshine anything on earth that we once thought valuable.

That's what makes living for Jesus worth it. That's what makes giving up whatever we have to give up, whatever cost we have to pay, whatever we suffer, worth it. Yes, there is a cost. Yes, sometimes it is very pricey. Yet, when we see him in his beauty, we are more than willing to throw it all away so that we can gain him.

What are you living for that makes the beauty of Jesus dim in your life? What do you prize that you are unwilling to give up to receive more of him? Whatever it is, spend time seeking God until he gives you a glimpse of his glory and beauty. Once he does, you won't want to live for anything else. You'll be willing to do whatever it takes to have him. Trust me, you'll be happier for it. You'll discover what you were made for.