Weekend Reading

A Feast Without Leftovers @ Blue Yonder Ranch

It’s okay though. In the words of that great troubadour of old (John Mayer), I didn’t have a camera by my side, so “I could see the world with both my eyes.”

It was a phase of life – just being in the moment, just enjoying what was without worrying at all about how to save it for later.

A feast without leftovers.

So while I don’t have the answers – I still don’t know whether it’s better to blog or not to blog - I do know that I am grateful for the friends that I made and the stories that I shared here. I am equally grateful for the time that I was quiet and for the experiences that I just lived without wondering how they would translate to a post.

Teach Children the Bible Is Not About Them by Sally Lloyd-Jones

When we drill a Bible story down into a moral lesson, we make it all about us. But the Bible isn’t mainly about us, and what we are supposed to be doing — it’s about God, and what he has done!

Because the power of the story isn’t in the lesson.

The power of the story is the story.

I stole your stuff. Now I’m holding it for ransom. @ The Path Less Taken

To the contrary, in our house we operate as a family. We’re all on the same team. It’s not my house, or my husband’s house, or the kids’ house...it’s our house. We all work together, and we respect each other’s things.

We respect each other’s differences, we communicate, we compromise, we give and we take. We operate as a family.

This house is our haven. The one place we’re guaranteed to be free to be ourselves, and free to give and receive unconditional love. To learn, to play, to experiment, to grow. Sometimes our house is clean. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes it’s very messy.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Bread Connection @ Rhythm of the Home

Then I heard jesting and cackling outside as three women down the street arrived; they had been meeting every Friday morning for the last fifty years to bake their bread in this oven that was 400 years old. The thought of 400 years worth of history going into the bread every week was enough to take my breath away.

These women worked with such ease; they had rhythm that was as seamless and ingrained into their bodies as the soot was to the ceiling. There was always an order to be followed: to the left of the oven they lined up all their bread yet to be baked; one woman would place the bread from the board onto the peel; the next would make the special mark on top so they knew whose loaves were whose. Finally the oven master would slip the peel into the oven, arranging each loaf just so, according to size and time requirement; a knowledge only years of practice could perfect.