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you may have noticed some visual changes here on Jesus Is Extravagant. if not, better luck next time.

we’re (and by ‘we’re’ i mean ‘i’m') streamlining things on this site and over at calvaryhanford.com to keep up with current web design trends (or at least the ones i act like i care about).

the main trend: less is more.

(if you’re interested in web design at all read this post)

i didn’t have the foresight to do a before and after of this blog, but i can show you a bit of the trans-morph-i-tation of calvaryhanford.com.

here was the basic layout of calvaryhanford.com 2.0, back a few months ago:

not the worst…not as cluttered as calvaryhanford.com 1.0…but still not all that it could be.

the banner up top was a flash banner, which moved and swirled with adobe-delight.

i’m sick of flash banners (note their sudden and surprising absence on this blog). they are distracting, don’t work for lots of people (thanks mr. gates!) and cause the overall load time of a page to increase.

i do enjoy white-based sites…i find them less overwhelming than others (especially black-backgrounded sites).

here’s the same page recently re-layed out:

the changes aren’t too big at this point…still a flash banner at the top, just moves less. made the pages align in the center and gave them a bit more of a ‘blog’ feel with the diagonally lined background. added a couple important buttons (print page and search) there in the top right below the “contact us” tab.

getting a bit closer to:

calvaryhanford.com 2.5 (maybe 2.2). the flash banners have been replaced by a static image (less loading time). the big, chunky buttons at the top are replaced by text-based links and we’re working towards getting rid of all superfluous graphics.

i’m not crazy about the ‘worship archive’ icon…but one thing at a time. i don’t have a lot of spare moments to change 166 pages for just one graphic. we’ll see.

anyway, head on over to calvaryhanford.com and let me know what you think. we love our website and want it to be fresh, helpful and content-rich. if you find any errors, broken links, etc, then just click “webmaster” at the bottom of any page to email me, i’d appreciate it.

 

blessings

read-out-of-the-day

passage – Genesis 18-21, Daniel 8-9

wish-i-could’ve-been-there – when the Lord appears to abraham with the 2 angels before departing to destroy sodom and gomorrah. what an amazing thing to witness the Theophany.

stand-out - i love how abraham recognized his Lord immediately, ran to Him and gave Him worship. the presence of Jesus is recognizable even to a man like abraham who had no permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit, who had no Gospels to read, who didn’t even have artistic depictions of Messiah. yet, there, from the door of his tent he recognized his Sovereign, the One who had made so many wonderful promises to him.

daniel, too, recognized the Lord and His angel when he had his vision of the ram and the goat. his response was humble worship, confession and expectation.

it is a good reminder that i don’t have to convince myself that God is present in my life, in my worship, in my surroundings. if He is, it will be immediately recognizable. if He’s not, no amount of human effort will change it.

only a humble submission to my Creator will increase the presence of His Spirit in my life. abraham was used to begin a nation because he submitted to God, left all behind and followed Him. aligned with the Lord, abraham was able to deliver Lot from destruction through patient and expectant asking.

daniel was used as one of the greatest prophets of all time because he submitted himself to God’s word and to prayer. through his dedication and refusal to compromise God used him to reveal to every generation the timeline of the end of human history.

how exciting that God can use a single man so much when He only asks that we love Him and submit to Him, that we be soft clay that is ready to be molded.

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blogging, pictures | January 7th, 2008