Thoughts for the Day
iPhone App Photo Experiments
REAL Gingerbread House
Rainy Afternoon Chicken Soup
This is where it starts - pastured raised organic Chickens
Old laying hens, Chicken feet & necks, Water, Veggies and all day - makes a great stock
Freeze lots of stock and then thaw as needed in hot water
Add some diced vegetables
Save bones and scraps for next bone broth or stock making day
Add chicken and veggies to rich chicken stock
Here it is - 30 minutes later. A delicious, organic, rich in gelatin, healing Chicken Soup. With lots left for the rest of the week.
Mixed up Christmas Cactus
Blooming in November
Christian Understanding of Work
Awe and Intimacy
“The gospel means (as Luther said) that we are simul justus et peccator, that is, in Christ we are simultaneously righteous yet sinful. If we have a more antinomian view of salvation, believing that we are all accepted because God is vaguely loving, then we may be existentially aware of God’s love but not of his holiness. There will be no awe. That can lead to the exclusively warm, ‘folksy’ demeanor. If, on the other hand, we have a more legalistic view of salvation, believing that we are accepted because we live and believe everything ‘exactly right,’ then we may be existentially aware of God’s holiness but not of his bounteous mercy. There will be no wonder. That can lead to an overly stiff and dignified manner.
In neither case are the leaders really amazed at grace. Only when there is a profound awareness of the holiness of God and of the costliness of the sacrifice he provided will there be a joyful awe that is at once warm and forceful. Only a joyful yet awe-filled heart- an exuberant decorum- can keep pomp and sentimentality from mimicking the two true poles of biblical worship: awe and intimacy.”
Tim Keller, Worship By the Book, ed. D.A. Carson, pp. 213-214
Perfect Love, Perfect Justice - Meet at Calvary
But the God of Christianity is a God of both perfect love and perfect justice. The two meet, embrace, coalesce, at Calvary.
R. B. Kuiper, The Bible Tells Us So, p. 107
The Cross is the Tree of Life
He hangs in the place of death, yet thence He gives life. He delivers from death by dying. Life streams out, like rivers of water, from that center, the cross. The cross is the tree of life.
Horatius Bonar, Studies in the Gospel of John, p. 20
Foot of the cross, shrinks us to our true size
Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, “I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.” Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary.. It is there at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.
J.R.W. Stott, Only One Way, p. 179
Power of the Cross of Christ
And from these two great enemies, the power of the world and the power of self, nothing can deliver us but the Cross of Christ.
Andrew Murray, Aids to Devotion p. 28
