A Tasting, #3

Welcome. It's been a too-long while since I last posted. Why is it that when I get too busy, my writing (my love!) is the first thing to go? Until I figure that out and fix it... bear with my pent-up ramblings--this time the 'wine tasting' will be through wild vineyards of California rather than staid, established vineyards of France.

#1: Road Trips

Road Trips have the potential to be awesome and wonderful and epic and scenic and unforgettably life-changing.

They simultaneously have the potential of being terrible and awful and long and hot and tired and dreadfully revealing about the true state of the human (read: my) human heart.

#2: Spinach Lasagna, and Beer

Houston is growing on me, a little bit. (Gasp!) Probably, it's for these reasons:

• Houston is where I learned my husband makes killer spinach lasagna.
• Houston has St. Arnold's beer (which, by the way, goes great with spinach lasagna--especially the summer pils variety)
• Houston is the home of Ecclesia Church.
• Houston has other people who love Jesus and want to follow Him, no matter what it costs. We got to eat lunch with a couple of those people yesterday, and it was glorious.
• Houston is yet another monument to the fact that I need to change, and that I am farther from being like Jesus than I previously thought.

#3: How to Train Your Dragon

This movie came on HBO yesterday. I'd seen it before--a wonderfully well-animated and written 'children's film.' It almost brought me to tears. Am I really that pathetic?

No. I refuse to believe that I am that pathetic. I think there really is something deep inside me (and you?) that longs for peace and reconciliation between everyone and everything--humans and humans, humans and plants, humans and animals, humans and elements, humans and themselves, humans and God. Romans 8 communicates that Creation also longs for peace and reconciliation between everyone and everything:

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (vv. 22-25)


#4: The Bible is not a Magic Wand


I will reflect on this more fully in (a) later post(s), but I have noticed more and more lately that many Christians use the Bible like a magic wand. My own theory is that this is based on a faulty understanding of Isaiah 55:11 ("...so is My word that goes out from My mouth: It will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.").

The Bible is not a magic wand. It is not a tool. It is not something that we can wield and/or control.

It is the word of God. It is living, and it is powerful. But it is not a handy supply of fairy dust.

#5: This picture is cool.

I used to dream for hours on swings. And probably my favorite thing ever between the ages of 3-10 was when my dad would push me on the swing and sometimes even grab the swing, run behind it and then run under it while letting it go--gosh I was a bird in those days. Thanks, A.