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Life, as I pray to embrace it

If life is a story, how shall we then live? It isn’t complicated (just hard). Take up your life and follow Him. Face trouble. Pursue it. Climb it. Smile at its roar like a tree planted by cool water even when your branches groan, when your golden leaves are stripped and the frost bites deep, even when your grip on this earth is torn loose and you fall among mourning saplings. ~N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, p83

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Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain—they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with laughter. … I can be giving my fingers, my back, my mind, my words, my breaths, to my wife and my children and my neighbors, or I can grasp after the vapor and the vanity for myself, dragging my feet, afraid to die and therefore afraid to live. And, like Adam, I will still die in the end. ~N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, p84

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a very Happy Christmas to you

 We redheads would like to cry out, a very happy Christmas to you all! And long live King Jesus!!!

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And on the sledge sat a person whom everyone knew the moment they set eyes on him. He was a huge man in a bright red robe (bright as holly-berries) with a hood that had fur inside it and a great white beard that fell like a foamy waterfall over his chest. Everyone knew him because, though you see people of his sort only in Narnia, you see pictures of them and hear them talked about even in our world—the world on this side of the wardrobe door. But when you really see them in Narnia it is rather different. Some of the pictures of Father Christmas in our world make him look only funny and jolly. But now that the children actually stood looking at him they didn’t find it quite like that. He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still. They felt very glad, but also solemn.

“These are your presents,” was the answer, “and they are tools not toys. The time to use them is perhaps near at hand. Bear them well.”

“And now”—here he suddenly looked less grave—“here is something for the moment for you all!” and he brought out (I suppose from the big bag at his back, hut nobody quite saw him do it) a large tray containing five cups and saucers, a bowl of lump sugar, a jug of cream, and a great big teapot all sizzling and piping hot. Then he cried out “A Merry Christmas! Long live the true King!” and cracked his whip and he and the reindeer and the sledge and all were out of sight before anyone realised that they had started.

~excerpts from C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Chapter X: The Spell Begins to Break.~

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Five days until Christmas!!

Our good God, our overflowing God, our God of yes and amen, has always been able to promise far more than we are able to believe. I am not here speaking of unbelief, or of hard hearts, which is another problem. I am speaking here of a true and sincere faith, a God-given faith, but one which is still finite, and which God loves to bury under an avalanche of promises. We serve and worship the God who overwhelms, who delights to overwhelm. ~Douglas Wilson, God Rest Ye Merry, p14

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This Christmas, remember you are learning how to open God’s gifts to us. And because He really knows how to shop for us, when we get the wrapping paper off, we are always surprised. ~Douglas Wilson, God Rest ye Merry, p21

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God was made flesh. This means that we may build, sew, pick up a knife and fork, make love, spank our kids, shovel the walk, and do all to the glory of God. Earthiness is not the gospel, but the gospel did come to earth. Earthiness is no savior, but earthiness is saved. ~Douglas Wilson, God Rest Ye Merry, p27

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No escaping time

In this world, there is no true freeze frame.
Pictures do not escape time.
But they do sit in it.

Pictures are men grabbing at wind to make
themselves feel less beaten by the driving current of this river.
We pinch brushes to pinch moments, feelings, and…
that thing that was just now but now it’s gone.

Did you catch that?
We push buttons and point electric boxes.
Did you get that?
And most of the time we never go back to look.
I got it (I think).
But we feel better, like fishermen hooking everything but reeling rarely.

~N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, p60

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Moments

I may not have a professional camera or Photoshop or anything else to remotely make my photographs anything officially *nice* but hey, I snap shots of my family and our life… and I love it. It’s the only way I can really stop time (even for a moment!), relive time, remember moments ~ so I do love it. And I love to share it. 🙂 Because it’s so true that these moments are constantly slipping back into the rear view, and I am a total & complete amnesiac.

Snap a photo or two. Read verses about futility.
Watching one’s small humans age and grow up packs a serious punch.
It’s like being stuck in a dream unable to speak,
like being a ghost that can see but not touch,
like standing on a huge grate while a storm rains oiled diamonds,
like collecting feathers in a storm.
Parents in love with their kids are all amnesiacs,
trying to remember, trying to cherish moments, ghosts trying to hold the world.
Being mortals, having a finite mind
when surrounded by joy that is perpetually rolling back into the rear view
is like always having something important on the tips of our tongues,
something on the tips of  our fingers,
always slipping away, always ducking our embrace.
~N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, p107

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Overwhelming: How Like God

Jesus was a baby, a material gift. We do not celebrate Christmas by trying to back-pedal away from the world of material things. … The story includes the world, and everything in it. He came to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found. ~Douglas Wilson, God Rest Ye Merry, p33

My wife and I tend to overgift to our kids at Christmas. We laugh and feel foolish when a kid is so distracted with one toy that we must force them into opening the next, or when something grand goes completely unnoticed in a corner. How consumerist, right? How crassly American. How like God. ~N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, p108

 

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‘Tis the Season

In case anyone out there needs a couple of ideas for links on Christmas festivity reality-checks… or in case you need a reminder why you are doing what you’re doing during this season of the year… take a peek at these things below.

This is what life is all about. Especially at Christmastime.

Joy to the Whirled

Generosity: the Antidote to Consumerism

6 Ways to Handle Stress this Christmas

Keeping Jesus at the Center

The Gospel According to the Wasteland

The Gospel According to the Trees

The Gospel According to Gifts

A Brief History of Christmas

The Goodness of Stuff Means Merry Christmas

A Theology of Christmas Gifts

 

So hey, happy Adventing and merry Christmasing. Because there is good reason for all this. Jesus. Now and the rest of the year through. But for now? Whirl with it. Put the heathens to shame. Show them that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ (yes, the One who humbled Himself to be cast into human skin and plunged into the dark womb of a virgin) IS LORD. Amen.

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The Savior Reigns… even in the public square!

Did anyone else see this flash mob? And was anyone else in tears, realizing that it’s just one more reminder that The Gospel can not be vanquished? Christ may not normally “be allowed” in public schools and national places, yet here is the United States Air Force band at The Smithsonian Museum singing about the reign of Christ!! (to which a big part of me wants to say, Eat That, Obama! :lol:) Jesus is the joy of man’s desiring! He is Wisdom! He is the brightest Love! They actually sang, at the top of their voices in a public place, JOY TO THE WORLD ~ THE SAVIOR REIGNS!!!

Oh man. Anyway.
Good stuff. :happytears:
Christ is King!!!!! Let all the world hear it! Let all peoples proclaim it! Whether they recognize what they’re proclaiming or not, God is using them as His mouthpiece to proclaim The Gospel! This is one little way I see every knee bowing, every tongue confessing… Jesus Christ is Lord!! (Philippians 2:9-11 and Romans 14:11) Amen.

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Uniquely Wrapped

So we bought a dozen bottles of wine to give as some gifts this year, and I was trying to figure out an interesting way to wrap them. Not that using a wine bottle sized/shaped gift bag from the Dollar Store isn’t good enough (because it is!), but I thought perhaps I could do something a little more unique, and maybe even more economical or useful, if I really thought hard. 😉

So this is what I came up with.

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I found these two different fun ideas for wrapping wine bottles with fabric (here and here), and found that each could be accomplished on a normal sized wine bottle using a very economical flour sack kitchen towel (and each has a handle for carrying the bottle, which would be really handy if giving them out at church or whatnot). I am still trying to figure out which wrapping version I like best, and also what I want to do for gift tags (right now I’m playing around with paper bags, red & white baker’s twine, and jute webbing)…

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but it’s pretty fun… and I love being able to make small, simple things extra fun, useful, and/or pretty.

What are some fun ways you’ve seen (or done!) something uniquely wrapped lately?

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New Recipes

I am now cultivating a new habit in the kitchen! Due to the alarming rate at which my family consumes yogurt, I am now making our own yogurt! I can make 4 quarts + 1 pint for $3. Nothing wrong with that, especially when it is so easy to do!! I am so thankful that I can do this, in order to bless my family and be wise with what God has given us. I have habitually spent around $1.50 per day on yogurt, and while that meant it came in handy little serving-sized-packages where we had access to as many as six flavors in the fridge at a time, that just really adds up quickly and somehow when I figured out it doesn’t have to be that expensive, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t tried this before! We like to just stir a little spoonful of homemade jam into our fresh yogurt; right now I only have strawberry and peach jams (just didn’t get around to making any other kinds this last summer), but I’ve found that applesauce or honey also make good yogurt flavoring additions.

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The other thing I recently tried (for Steven’s birthday, which happened to fall on Thanksgiving this year) was a layered sweet potato cheesecake. Completely delicious, and worth adding to the books to do again sometime. The only alteration I made (if I remember correctly) was that instead of a completely graham cracker crust, I did half pretzels and half graham crackers. Oh wait, one more addition: I added some cinnamon and nutmeg to the sour cream topping to spice it up. 🙂

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