recippe round up, missing technology

About three weeks ago Hillary and I started to go through all the recipees that she had cut out and saved from various magazines, friends, family, and other sources. We threw out 2/3 of what we started with because we already had a good recippee for that dish, seemed too complicated, expensive, or just weren't interesting. Weeding through the recipees has left us with a manageable stack of recipees that we are working our way through. It has been fun to try a new recippe or two each week. A favorite was double corn polenta with tortialla encrusted chicken.

This is my mp3 player, which I had been missing since our trip to the White Mountains in mid-July. I carry my mp3 player and blue tooth with me, almost wherever I go and thus put them in differnt bags, pants, cars, old shoes and various other places. This means that about every other month I am missing on of these for a few days. I try my best to put them back in the same place each time, and it works 90% of the time. The other 10% is when I am wondering if I lost it and asking God that it would turn up. So far, God keeps bringing my technology back to me as I find it in interesting locations. These locations make sense when I put the device there, but are very difficult to find after a few days, weeks, or sometimes only hours, pass by. One of the favorite things about my mp3 player is listening to lectures and sermons. I spend a good ammount of time in the car and one of radio's works sporadically so drives can get tedious when the mp3 player is missing. Fortunately it has found its way home and we are one big happy family again.

moving highways

Two Sunday's ago, the 16th, I had the privilege of preaching in Providence, RI at a sister church. Providence is a neat city and the church, Trinity, is workg to further God's kingdom in the city. As I was getting ready to go there I was told that the directions might be off since they are working on one of the highways. I didn't realize the magnitude of the highway work until I was lost, and eventually made it there and was told that the highway is actually being moved. The reason that the highway is being moved is that it presently cuts the city in half. Harford suffers from the same problem, where the highway criscrosses through the city breaking it up into little chunks. What is especially neat about the highway removal is that the church, which is more on the outskirts of down town, will be more at the center of things once the redevlopment begins. This highway relocation is exciting in how it benefit the church and for the city. I think about moving highways pretty often as I pass through Hartford on 84 (our major interstate), and as I drive through the city and see how it is disected by the freeway.

beach and baby

These are two great pictures! Wesley was really smiling and having a great time the other day and we were able to get a shot of it. He keeps growing and his legs are getting chunky now. The past month has been lots more fun since we are sleeping more and he is more interactive. The next picture is one of our teens buried in the sand at Misquamicut Beach in RI. The Connecticut beaches aren't that great so we took a trip to RI, which is only about 1.5 hours away. It was sorta cloudy, but we had a great time playing in the ocean, burying people in the sand, playing cards, eating humongous cheese fries, and enjoying each other's company. I got a little burnt since I didn't follow my own advice to the teens about "how easy it is to get burnt on a cloudy day." The water was a little chilly - probably the upper 60's but we swam a bunch anyway and laughed a lot as we tried to use the skimmer board and ended up crashing a bunch. If you have tried to use a skimmer board you know what I am talking about.

this is the day...

Probably my favorite part of being a dad, right now is the mornings. Usually I'm up before Hillary (since I sleep while she nurses during the night) so I'll try to grab Wesley when he first wakes up. Lately he's been on his belly - he rolls over now - and I'll flip him over and say hello as I take him out of the crib. He's usually a little groggy but once I talk to him a little bit he'll start to smile. Then as I'm chaning his diaper I'll sing his morning songs. The first morning song is "This is the day," which has a fun echo and goes like this: This is the day [this is the day], that the Lord has made [that the Lord has made]. We will rejoice [we will rejoice] and be glad in it [and be glad in it]. This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. And then you repeat it. When I start singing this song Wesley really starts to smile and gets all fired up. Singing this song and watching Wesley's response helps me internalize the words and remember that God has given me this day and that because of what Christ has done, I can rejoice regardless of the circumstances.

good books

I'm trying to catch up on my "reading plan" for 2008 and am enjoying time with books. The primary challenge has been rainy afternoons and late nights. Both of these sabotage my reading by inducing sleep. Here are two neat quotations that I've come across recently.

This is from the chapter on Apologetics: "Corresponding to human blindness is God's hiddeness. God hides himself from those who would know him without loving him. Pascal glories in the obscurity of Christianity, its "folly" as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 1. This obscurity is what we should expect from a God who hides himself from those who have no desire to love him. The revelation of God in Christ is ambiguous. Only through the gift of faith do we discern the presence of God in the same of the cross. ... The cross is the revelation of God to those disposed to love God, but it hides God from those disposed to reject his reign." This is a thought provoking book and as the authors here speak of the hiddenness of God they are arguing for the necessity of a faithful church community to show God's goodness. The chapter concludes "We need to make people want Christianity to be true. Then we might be able to persuade them that it is true."

This has also been a thought provoking book and still is. (I haven't finished either of these books yet.) N.T. Wright is a very smart and hard working guy who has done a lot of thinking about the resurrection. His primary thesis is that the early church's belief in the resurrection is only explainable by the fact that there was a resurrection. This may sound simple but after reading 250 pages there is a lot to his argument. A major theme that I've seen is how belief in a resurrection challenges power structures in this world. "The future resurrection and glorification of Jesus' followers will vindicate them as the true people of the one true God, despite their present suffering and humiliation, and herald the victory of the gospel of the powers of the world through the final act of new creation. ... Resurrection challenges the powers of the world, as no other theology or spirituality can do, with the news of the kingdom of the creator and covenant God."