Author: hopebroker

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Distracted by a Watch Face

Reading Time: 3 minutes

I was at a friend’s church yesterday, Jason Neville – Praise Chapel , when I saw this guy worshipping God with his hands raised. Then I saw his watch on his left wrist. Then I saw his watch face on his watch on his left wrist, with his hands raised, worshipping God. I know, i’m not supposed to be distracted by such things like a watch, but I was – so judge me.

This guy’s digital watch had some kind of branding on it. I was several feet away, but I could see it was a letter, like an “F” or something. That’s when it hit me, “wow, I never thought about a branded watch face before.” I wonder if I can do that on my Apple Watch. It turns out, you can!

First I needed an app to design a font. A logo will work, but the watch face is kinda small, so a single letter or similar is better. Yes, you can do color, but that just makes it harder to see from a distance. I needed a simple app that let you control font style, color and background. I already had it and had used it before. It’s called Typorama.

 

First I used the app’s Watch Face template.

Just tap on the letters to change them in the app. Ignore the warning and click continue anyway – they don’t know what your creative jam is.

Then I choose a letter, mine’s a “g” because I like g’s – I have two of them 🙂

You’ll need to experiment with the app yourself to get the results you’d like. Just a hint, if you want to add the time and date and other info below your branded watch face, you’ll want the letter to ride high on the screen.

I recommend a white letter on black background, but feel free to do whatever.

Save it to your photos, I created a watch face album for organization purposes.

Once that’s done you open your watch app on your iPhone.

And go to Photos at the end of your face selections.

Click ‘custom’

Then click ‘add photo’ at the bottom

Select the photo of your brand (letter or logo) and click done.

Scroll down to add things to your watch face.

And click ‘save as your current watch face’ if your happy with it.

That’s it. You’ve branded your Apple Watch face.

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Making lemons out of lemonade

Reading Time: 3 minutesWait what? Don’t you have that backwards?

You can’t make lemons out of lemonade, that’s not the way it works.

I say we can and as Christ’s followers we must.

Currently, I’m into the guava infused lemonade. I enjoy telling myself, “It’s the ‘right’ kind of sugar.” Whatevs.

I truly enjoy the magic of an iced cold, freshly squeezed, real glass of lemonade. Romantically, I could be drinking it by the pool (which we used to have), sitting on the front porch after mowing the yard or overlooking Lake Tahoe from the balcony of our favorite rented cabin, number 83. However, its done, it reminds me of simpler days when grandma (not mine though, she was a whiskey sour kind a woman) would bring a tray of iced lemonade for all your neighborhood friends to share.

“Yeah, yeah, I know all about lemonade,” you say. “But, what about the crazy notion of making that beautiful cloudy yellow, lightly pulped, heavenly drink (sorry I drifted off on lemonade again) back into a lemon.”

Oh, yeah. See it would be nice to think that we could just share this illustrious, sugary, wonder of God with friends by taking the shortcut of handing it to them and saying, “here, drink this, its good and it took a lot of work to make it, but I want to make it easy for you so you’ll like it (and me).”

We all know how easy it is to grow lemons right?

WikiHow says anyone can do it. It should only take five to fifteen years, or sometimes… never. [according to WikiHow: Keep in mind that trees that come from seeds are not identical to the parent tree that they came from. Sometimes, the fruit that the new saplings produce is of a lesser quality. Other times, they do not produce edible fruit at all. This does not prevent the young tree from being visually pleasing. Keep this in mind when growing your tree. – https://www.wikihow.com/Plant-a-Lemon-Seed]

Jesus said, “A good tree produces good fruit and a bad tree produces bad fruit.” When it comes to people being discipled and growing in their faith, the point of making lemons out of lemonade isn’t to share a refreshing drink by oversimplifying the process, it’s showing people how to grow their own lemon tree and produce their own deliciously tart, tasty fruit (sidenote: I eat lemons right off the tree, sometimes peel and all). That takes time, right? Sometimes years, right? Christianity isn’t about mass production or mass conversion, it’s about mass process of deep change and miraculously difficult transformation. In other words, it’s still a walk and a path not a Uber and a dropoff.

I needed a lemon tree not just lemonade

Sure, when I was young, I loved receiving the cool, sweet-sour elixir of lemon. However, what I really needed was someone to show me how to grow a lemon tree, to one day see, feel, taste and completely experience my own fruit. Maybe sharing our faith isn’t just about giving a cold cup of lemonade in Jesus’ name – its about sharing the lemon seed of the gospel and demonstrating how folks can grow in their own faith.

You wanna makes some lemons outta lemonade with me? Jesus tip: “just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.” – Matthew 7:20 NLT

#BeNice