Day 23 - It is Finished!

Last Friday, March 17, was a CRAZY day! It was one of those days when multiple things that demand your attention all converge at one time. One of those things was that I was asked to fill in as a replacement for a speaker that was unable to present his talk at the Children's Ministry Leader's Conference. Being a conference for people that minister to children, they figured a cartoonist may have something waiting in the wings, ready to be used for such a time as this. Well, I did have something ready, sort of.  I had an idea that I'd been thinking of developing into a talk … someday. And now someday was staring me in the face. 

I had only one week to come up with a fully-illustrated, hour-long talk. YIKES! Every spare minute and then some was spent researching, writing, sketching and Photoshopping until the talk was finished just  6.5 hours before I had to present at 9:00 this morning. But was I ready? I had only 3 hours of sleep before my talk, but it was enough.  I am thankful for God's gift of grace in my fatigue and the adrenaline He gave me for the physical boost I needed to feel like I was awake and operational enough to give the presentation.

The talk was titled, "Seeing and Not Believing." In it I critiqued evolutionary images especially aimed at children, found in magazines, online and on TV shows and examined those images for imaginary content and exposed the evolutionary bias used to fill in the blanks in each of them. All artists at sometime or another have had to invent part of an image and in the realm of the paleoartist, that's the main part of their job description. The problem isn't that one has to fill in the blanks, rather it's a matter of which worldview is being used to fill in the blanks!

Everything went well, although the audience trickled in throughout my talk. Being the first speaker of the day and a replacement speaker at that does have it's disadvantages. But the audience seemed to enjoy what I had to say and show. My talks have a high volume of visuals. Who would've thought, eh? And after my talk, a few people even came up to shake my hand and express their appreciation.

I'll continue to develop the content of this talk in the days ahead. I hope to present this talk many more times if the opportunities arise. I'd like to see it turn into a talk available on DVD … someday … maybe … or maybe not. I'll leave that in the Lord's hands.