A Must-Listen on Biblical Womanhood

Highly, highly recommended to all women: Mark Driscoll's 4-part sermon series on Women and Femininity. If you only have time to listen to one (they're about an hour and 15 minutes each), Women as Homebuilders is especially excellent. They're available for free downloading (as are all of his other sermons). Go to the above link, click Downloads, then Sermons, then Practical Topics, and then Women (kinda complicated, but well-worth the effort!).

Shameless Product Non-Endorsement

A few days ago, a friend of mine was doing some spring cleaning. One of her projects was to clean out all of her purses. She came across one that she doesn't recall using since last November. Among the contents of the bag were two chicken nuggets from a certain well-known fast food chain, which shall remain nameless (although two red pigtails might give it away). Two 7-month old chicken nuggets! And the scary part is not that she had chicken nuggets in her purse (she's a mom). The scary part is that they looked as if she'd bought them yesterday! Yep, no mold, no decay... just two perfectly good-looking nuggets! Anybody hungry? :)

If you've seen SuperSize Me, this may remind you of the french fry experiment (the two-month old perfectly fresh-looking fries)... Now we know they weren't faking!

Shameless Product Endorsement

I have to say that Brown Cow™ Cream Top Plain Yogurt is the best commercial yogurt I have ever tasted. Creamy, full-bodied, not too tart, and no antibiotics or hormones to boot... add just a little good Canadian maple syrup, a bit of freshly ground flax seed and you've got a snack that's both nutritious and delicious! And hey, just saying "Brown Cow" gives us Canadians a chance to display our fine Canadian-raised pronunciation skills:)

Our Faithful God

"Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass." Joshua 21: 43-45

What Do You Expect?

I don't know about you, but I don't expect much from God. I am the master of negativity when it comes to my expectations about what God can and will do. It's not that I don't expect anything; rather, I actually expect to be disappointed, frustrated, bored, ineffective and weary. I might not say so, but my actions and reactions betray my real expectations. This is often true in my devotional time. I'll sit down with my Bible one morning after many days of not getting my devotions in before the kids wake up, and my attitude is one of "Well, it might be quiet now, but I'll just bet God only lets me have 5 minutes before Susanna comes bolting in here, so I might as well not try to read anything deep or difficult." Or lately, I've been working my way through the Old Testament, and there are many mornings when the chapter(s) for the day is(are) filled with genealogical information, or accounts of which tribe got which cities in the Promised Land. And as I notice that this is what I'll be reading for the day, the thought is that I'm about to be bored out of my mind. "Oh, yippee. Get to read a list of cities I can't pronounce. I'm gonna get a whole lot out of this one. Maybe I should just skip these chapters."

What does this say about my view of God? Well, he's little, and just about powerless, and not too interested in my daily life or thoughts. I don't like to say it, but if I really examine the beliefs that inform the way I live much of the time, that would be them.

Last week, as I was reading through Joshua, I came to the account of the crossing of the Jordan. You know, the one where the priests step in to the Jordan with the ark, and the river suddenly stops flowing and forms a wall of water all the way back at the city of Adam, and so the people cross over on dry land, and go on their merry way, and blah, blah, blah. Heard that one a hundred times. Wait, what? The river did what? Can you imagine being a citizen of Adam, and you're just going about your business, washing dishes in your kitchen and you look out the window like you might any other day, and... what in the world? There is a wall of water out there where there used to be a river. You'd probably freak out. I mean, that just doesn't happen every day. In fact, I only know of two times it did. This is a completely unnatural, extraordinary event. And who brought it about? That puny, powerless god of my own imagination? NO! The Almighty, All Powerful, All Glorious, All Sovereign All Righteous, Incredibly Creative God of the Bible! I come to a God who can stop a river in its tracks, and on top of that, made Himself into a man and died to save me, and all I expect from Him is 30 minutes of boredom and an ineffective, disappointing rest of the day? I must be crazy!

So lately, when I sit down to read the Bible, before I read anything or get any stupid ideas about certain passages being boring and worthless, I start with asking God to make me expectant, not of disappointment, but of all the wonderful things in His Word, things that the Holy Spirit can teach me even through genealogies. And reading with eyes looking out for God to work, I'm amazed at things that I learn from a passage that is primarily a description of land distribution!

No, Really!

If I have any loyal readership left out there, I would like to let you know that I am no longer in a state of denial: Rachel's assessment of my blogging frequency has been correct all along, and in order to be completely truthful, she should actually now list me under "Bloggers Who Don't Blog". I would really like to post at least from time to time, but I can't make any promises, seeing as the last entry was written as I thought life was slowing down a little bit, and then the last two months have been another whirlwind... I think life is heading back to a normal pace now!

My guess is that the best thing to do is to start fresh and not try to complete any previous blogging topics, although I'm still studying the Old Testament and thinking about the Law. But I'm more likely to blog if I can just start where my mind currently is, rather than trying to fill everyone in on everything I've thought or done in the last two months. And now I've got a diaper to change and dinner to start, so that's all for today!

I'm Back

It has been brought to my attention that my sister has now listed me under her "Blogs... That Don't Update Often". Okay, so it's true. But I think I have a good excuse this month (two kids aside:-)). We've spent the last week reorganizing the house and getting over jet-lag after a 10-day trip to Germany... yeah, a European vacation... makes us sound filthy rich. Privileged though we may be, thanks goes to my parents, who provided us with two of four plane tickets, room and board, transportation, tour guiding, and a marvelous time which we otherwise would not have been able to afford! I've been twice before, but this was Nathan's first time in Europe (not counting 7 hours in Amsterdam on our way to Kazakhstan for missions work). Now that my parents live there though, I'm quite sure it won't be the last time! They moved to a small city near Frankfurt (the only German city with skyscrapers!) in September, after my dad accepted a position teaching at the Freie Theologische Akademie (the only evangelical seminary in Germany). He's also overseeing church plants in Frankfurt and Berlin (sorry all those links are in German, but, well, they're aimed at Germans... what can I say?:-)). It was exciting to visit the church in Frankfurt (with 30-40 people), as well as a more established church of 80-100 in Lich, and see what God is doing in the country where the Reformation began and yet is now only about 2% evangelical Christian.

We also thoroughly enjoyed traveling around the southwestern part of Germany, seeing several castles, hiking up to the 900 year-old cloister on the hill near my parents house, eating lots of good bread, meat, cheese and sweet stuff (no refined sugar limitations that week!), and just hanging out with my parents and youngest sister. We also celebrated my birthday and Susanna's (can't believe she's two already!). I'm sure I'll have more to say, and pictures to post whenever I remember to take the film to Walmart!

I do want to say that the kids behaved very well on the flights, seeing as that's one of the first things everyone asks. We were praising God all the way there for graciously giving us the "bassinet seat". What's a bassinet seat? I asked the same thing when the flight attendant asked if we had been placed there. Apparently, they reserve the first row of economy class for parents traveling with infants, and they actually have a portable bassinet that hooks on to the class-divider. We had fully expected to have both kids on our laps the whole time (part of the reason we went now was because Susanna was turning 2 and we wanted to get the lap-kid discount before her birthday). But we ended up with 5 seats to ourselves, plus a place for Jacob to sleep comfortably! And leg room, because there were no seats in front of us! And we got the same thing returning, even though we were so late for our flight that I heard the one check-in attendant say to the other, just after we checked in, that no more people were going to be allowed on our flight! The only downside was that from where we were sitting, we could see what was going on in business class - offerings of ice cream, hot towels, fresh fruit and sweets, dinner on a real plate with real cutlery and linen napkins... :-) But I can't complain - we had 5 seats for 3 of us!

Jacob rolled over for the first time today! He'll be off to college before we know it;-)

Law and Gospel: As One Under Authority

Before I say anything more on the subject, I need to make an apology and important note. As many in the blogosphere have recently been discussing, the relatively new world of blogging brings up "new" issues, or at least new applications of old issues. One I have been thinking about as I consider what to include or not include in my blog is the issue of headship and submission as it relates to public discourse and blogging. As a woman submitted to the headship of my husband, what should I feel free to publish and how should I go about it? My blog is a journal of sorts, and that leads to the temptation to write anything I would normally put in a journal. It is important, however, to remember the public nature of such an on-line diary, and therefore, to post only those things that are helpful for public consumption. Part of doing that as a married woman is writing in such a way that my husband comes off looking like the respected head of our home that he is, and for me, that means not posting anything of significance without first talking the subject through with Nathan. Not that I necessarily ask permission to post things, but rather that I try to make sure he doesn't hear my thoughts on my public blog before he hears them from me, and that he gets input and can give direction before anyone else. The reason I bring all this up is that I actually should have made note of this in my first Law and Gospel post. I realized after the fact that although I was making a conscious effort to only post what Nathan and I had already talked through, this may not have been apparent to those reading the post. I'm afraid I may have come off sounding like I'm going this study alone, which is not the case. Although I was the one who brought up the question, Nathan is also doing some study to help guide me in my own study. Anything you read on my blog, we have already discussed and agreed on. So I am not without guidance in this... I write these posts to help flesh out and clarify what Nathan and I have talked through in order to spur my own thinking, and perhaps yours as well. And so I want to apologize, first to my wonderful husband Nathan, and then to any reader who may have gotten the wrong impression. I will do my best to write this "series" (and any other such things) in the first person plural.

Upcoming topics include: Old Testament Wisdom, Thoughts on the Food Laws and Law, Gospel and Child-Rearing...

By the way, on a totally random note, hot sauce on popcorn is really good.

Law and Gospel: Underlying Assumptions

There are certain truths relating to the Law that I am absolutely certain of, so I want to lay these out briefly, for my own good and also to dispell any notions that I might be wandering into any kind of works-righteousness territory. The Scripture references given are only a minute sample of abounding evidences for the following truths. You can tell I was mainly paging through Romans as I wrote this:

1. Keeping the Law is not the source of our righteousness. (Romans 3:20)

2. We are justified before God by grace alone by faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. (Romans 3:22-25; Ephesians 2:8,9)

3. The Law serves to bring conviction of sin and show us our need for Christ's atoning sacrifice because it is impossible for any human (other than Jesus) to live up to its standards and carry it out perfectly. (Romans3:19,20; 5:20,21)

4. As a believer, I am no longer condemned by the law. (Romans 8:1,2)

5. God's grace does not excuse us from obedience, but rather motivates us toward greater obedience. (Romans 6)

I'm positive there are more things that I'm sure of, but they're not coming to me right now. Those are at least the basics. So my main questions concerning the law and it's relationship to the believer are things along the lines of how much of the Mosaic Law is relevant to gospel-motivated obedience in the Christian life. Obviously anything repeated and expanded by Christ in the gospel accounts or by any of the Spirit-inspired New Testament writers stands. But what about all the other commands of the law? Are they merely for anthropological enthusiasts, or should we regard them as ageless wisdom given by our omnipotent Creator? More thoughts later...

I'd like to take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to announce that Susanna hit a record score of four successful trips to the potty today! (Frankly, two would have been a record:-)) I'm not counting any unhatched chickens, but I'd like to think that means we're making some headway in the potty-training department.

Law and Gospel: Introduction

In all our recent thinking about healthy eating, I came across information from a few different sources on the potential risks of eating pork and other scavenger animals, which got me to thinking about Old Testament law and its relevance for the New Testament believer. I began to realize that my understanding of how a Christian should view the Law is severely underdeveloped. I’ve grown up under the assumption that the Ten Commandments and some other OT laws (like capital punishment) still apply, but others, like laws about animal slaughter and tearing moldy bits out of garments, don’t. But why I would believe this I could never tell you… I’ve often had questions, when the issue of capital punishment comes up, as to why we think that’s good but don’t follow all the rest of the Law… But it seemed too complicated an issue to really think about, so I let it go.

Lately, however, I am beginning to see just how relevant the question of law and gospel really is to everyday living, and besides that, any theological issue that I am willing to ignore because of potential complications just shows how little I care about what God’s Word really says. I should be desiring to grow deeper in understanding in all areas of doctrine, especially those I don’t understand well or have firm convictions on! So I’ve resolved to begin some study in the area of law and gospel, which, for the time being, consists of reading through the “Law” (Exodus through Deuteronomy, plus some parts of Genesis) during my devotional time in the morning, and reading Five Views on Law and Gospel for some academic treatment of the various views on the subject. As I am doing this study, which is likely to last some months, I will be posting thoughts, observations, convictions and conclusions periodically on this blog… a series of sorts. Feel free to comment with your own meditations! Later today (assuming the day goes at least partially according to plan;-)): Underlying Assumptions. Stay tuned!

Here's a recipe we enjoy for breakfast or light dinner.

Nutty Whole Grain Waffles

These are adapted from Cooking & Baking with Fresh Ground Flour...

1. The night before, mix:
1 c. whole wheat flour (I use white wheat flour, but regular red wheat will work)
2 1/2 c. rolled cereal grains*
2 c. milk
2 T. honey
Cover and let sit overnight.

2. In the morning, mix in:
1/2 c. butter, melted
1/2 c. orange juice (or apple juice)
1 egg, beaten

3. Sift over batter and whisk in:
2 t. baking powder**

4. Fold in:
1/2 - 1 c. chopped walnuts

5. Spread batter on waffle iron and bake until brown.

Serve with maple syrup and sour cream/plain yogurt, or other desired topping (I also like unsweetened applesauce).

The recipe makes 4-5 large waffles, and they are pretty filling. If doing them for dinner, I start the process in the morning, let it sit all day and then do steps 2-5 at dinner time.

*oats work fine... I prefer a rye/barley/wheat/oat mix, which you can buy at health food stores or roll yourself
**add this right before cooking, as baking powder becomes active when it gets wet

Those desiring more specifics on the grain mill can visit the comments section of my previous post, seeing as I wrote a post-length comment there.

Okay, now that I've had several people ask me where I'm going to find time to mill all our grain with two kids running around, and where in the world I'm going to find a place for a mill in the house, I've realized that some explanation is in order... especially seeing as two months ago, I, too, would have entertained images of a stout old man in lederhosen handcranking a very large wheel for hours. This is our mill: it weighs all of 5 pounds, runs on an electric motor (so I just put the grain in and let it go for 5-30 minutes-- depending on the amount of grain I've added), and sits on our kitchen counter next to the coffee maker. It does come with a hand-crank (for power outages, which might be useful if we had a gas stove, but we don't), but my guess is that I'll only ever use it once, just to try it out:-)

It arrived last Wednesday, and I love it! We got a flaker attachment too, so we can make our own oatmeal and flaked wheat cereals. And yes, we now have 130 pounds of grain sitting in our kitchen. So go ahead and call us hippy health nuts:-)

Seriously though, we are feeling great and have so much more energy these days... and our blood sugar is a lot more stable all day long. And we've lost a couple pounds. These are the pleasant side effects of working at taking better care of the bodies God has given us, so that we will have the strength and energy we need to carry out our God-given roles and responsibilities.

The Feast

We live in a culture where it is expected that you can get whatever you want, whenever you want it. This is true in many areas, but I want to focus on the area of food today. If you live in the US or Canada and are willing to pay for it (most people are), you can get any food you want from any nation on earth at any time of year, and fast, too. You can have fresh strawberries in January (nevermind that they don’t taste quite so “fresh”), a whole dinner ready in 5 minutes from a little box, and if you want a little something sweet, you can grab a box of Krispy Kremes on your way to the checkout. We want everything “gourmet”. Birthday cakes aren’t quite as special as they were when we were 4, because we can pick up a cake from the Walmart bakery any night of the week and eat it after dinner for no reason at all, other than that we happen to like cake. Nathan commented to me after Christmas that even Christmas dinner didn’t seem like a big deal because we eat that kind of food (though not in those quantities!) all the time. I could go on. But my point is that for centuries before us, and still, to a greater or lesser extent, in the rest of the world, “special” food was and is reserved for special times. Even in Germany, which is very much a “Western” country, it is difficult to find fruits and vegetables out of season and Pfeffernuesse, Stollen and Gluehwein are only available in November and December (of course, you can make your own any time of year, but who would? - they’re Christmas foods!). If you live in a small town and want tofu, you might need to travel to a big city to get it. And certainly in more remote and/or poorer areas of the world, daily fare is very simple and based on things that are cheap and readily available - beans and rice, for example. But then, bring on a reason to celebrate and out come the delicacies! A special homecoming, wedding, harvest festival, Christmas… expect a real feast! Except most of us in this continent would only see it as a big meal… nothing special about it, because we eat “special” food all the time.

I want to reintroduce The Feast in our family. By eating more simply on a daily basis, sticking mostly to seasonal fruits and vegetables, eating locally produced whole foods, and drastically reducing the amount of sugar in our diets (the expense of honey, molasses and Sucanat* over refined sugars helps us eat less of it), we will not only save enough money throughout the year to throw real feasts when we have reason to, but those feasts will be looked forward to and savored because they are full of foods we don’t eat all the time. I want birthday cake to be special, not just because it has candles on it, but because cake is a special food, requiring time and more expensive ingredients than our normal fare. I want it to be special because we don’t just enjoy sweets whenever we want. I want food to be a real part of the celebration, not just something to fill our bellies like any other day. I want special occasions to have a meal that reflects, to a very small extent, the incredible feast that will be set before us at the marriage supper of the Lamb, which will be far beyond any comparison with even the best earthly feast you ever had!

The picture is from the movie Babette's Feast, a great classic and good example of a real feast!

*SuCaNat = sugar cane natural: evaporated sugar cane juice granules that retain the nutrients of the sugar cane

To Your Health!

As mentioned in a previous post, we decided this year to cut refined sugars and flours out of our diet ("refined" modifies "sugars" AND "flours" - my sister asked me after she read the first post why we weren't eating flour anymore). No, we haven't gone wing-nutty... just maybe a little health-nuttish by current cultural standards. We met a couple who eats super healthy but who is quite normal otherwise, and on top of being "normal", they aren't vegetarians. Nothing against vegetarians on my part - I'm not a big meat eater anyway - but Nathan, well, the man needs his red meat. So when this couple, in the process of talking about all the health benefits of eating unprocessed stuff, asked if we might be interested in going in with them on a cow (as in the already slaughtered, made-into-steaks kind), Nathan got intrigued. A week of serious sugar craving (it IS addictive, you know) despite the fact that we were still getting some from the last few "bad" things we were trying to get rid of, followed by another two weeks of more minor adjustments... but this week we are feeling pretty good and I've had more energy the past couple days than I've had in months, even though I'm getting less sleep... and I'm really enjoying trying new recipes with new grains... A small portion of our tax refund will purchase us a grain mill so we can buy our grains in bulk and mill them fresh in our kitchen (even whole grains loose a substantial amount of nutrients a few days after milling) - okay, maybe we are wing-nutty:-)... but I've done a little grain milling in our coffee grinder and the muffins I made tasted better than the same ones made with store-bought flour (and it's cheaper to buy the grain in bulk than the flour).

More on our reasoning, and some recipes, in the coming days (or posts, anyway)...

Now don't worry... we're not into legalism - so if you invite us over for dinner, we'll gladly eat whatever you fix!

Toddler Antics

Today Susanna acted like the two-year-old that she almost is: this morning she carried my rings (which I had removed for bread kneading) into the living room and temporarily lost them for me (they were later recovered). Then she decided she wanted to wash her hands in the bathroom sink while I was preoccupied with Jacob... and proceeded to fill my make-up case with water while she was at it (I am still in the process of drying everything out). Then she opened the fridge, took out the carton of hard-boiled eggs and dropped them all on the floor (fortunately they weren't raw, but even hard-boiled eggs break when you drop them!). And then she opened a drawer, found the negatives from our wedding, tore the envelope and dumped them all out in the drawer (no damage other than the envelope, but a mess all the same). But it still made me smile before she went to sleep when she insistently informed me that a parrot says "Polly cracker! Polly cracker!"

*Edit*: I forgot to mention that she also found the Comet I had accidentally left on the back of the toilet and dumped half the contents into the toilet, then proceeded to "clean" the toilet...

Tagged In Fours

Okay, okay... I don't usually do these chain things... reminds me too much of those silly 80's chain letters that were supposed to net you millions of dollars, postcards, recipes, friends, etc... but all they ever succeeded in was make everyone you sent them on to rather annoyed at you;-) However, seeing as these tag games don't claim any rewards other than "fun" and seeing as my blog posts have been rather few and far between, and since I've been tagged by a blogger I highly respect, I'll do this one. JUST this one, so don't any of you other taggers start sending me new ones!:-)

Four jobs I've had:
-Data Entry Clerk (among other places, at Humana, where I learned just how crazy the US health insurance industry is - no cynicism there;-))
-Waitress (I'd do that one again)
-Research Assistant for the U of T linguistics department (my major)
-File Clerk

Four places I've lived:
-Louisville, KY
-Toronto, ON (the place I consider "home")
-Ephrata, PA (most of my childhood years)
-Baltimore, MD (and born near Chicago, so that's ALL the places I've lived)

Four vacations I've taken:
-Virginia
-Germany
-Florida
-Quebec
(I've also been to Vietnam, the Phillipines, Rwanda, Kenya and Kazakhstan, but those weren't "vacations" - I was doing ESL teaching/missions work)

Four (or not) vehicles I've owned:
-Toyota Camry (though I don't actually drive it)
-a sturdy pair of legs

Four blogs I want to tag:
well, considering my intro, I shouldn't propogate these things;-)

Had to post this one! (sorry it's not a new one for you family members:-))

On Remembering

It's about time for me to head to bed (per New Year's resolution #1: move the bedtime WAY back from 12:30 - we've made it back to about 11:30 at this point - so that I can get up early enough to have devotions before our crazy toddler becomes a distraction and get Nathan some breakfast before he heads to work, seeing as #2 involves drastic improvements on our eating habits, mostly with regards to the cutting out of refined sugars and flours, which may be explained more fully in an upcoming post, although I make no promises - how's that for a whole blog entry just in the parentheses?:-))...

But before I do so, I just want to say that we have been incredibly blessed with two healthy, beautiful children, who, despite all the difficulties associated with child-rearing, are much more than we deserve or even hoped for... some friends of ours found out a few days ago that there is very little chance of them ever having biological children, and as we grieve with them in their suffering, I am reminded how often we take our own children for granted... I am reminded how little I ever even think about the fact that for the last part of highschool and first couple years of university, I was struggling with the possibility of never having children... how rarely do I look at Susanna and Jacob and recall the days of walking through the park on the way home from class and feeling sadness as I watched kids playing with their parents because I was losing hope of ever being able to have any children of my own... in my case, God caused my body to begin working properly (and it was God, because the doctors never could figure out what was wrong in the first place) shortly before Nathan and I started dating, so worry over infertility was never a part of our relationship... but it was certainly a part of my life for several years and yet, I seem to have moved on... forgotten...

Isn't it just so easy to get what we want and then forget the struggles that came before the having? How often do I take any and every blessing for granted? Lord, may this time of weeping with those who weep spur us on also to remember and praise you for all you have given us!