Friends, French Bread & Deep Thoughts

Guest Map Props! Crystal is the latest and greatest to make her mark on the guest map. She has a little boy about 6 weeks older than Noelle and I love reading her journal as a sign of what is to come. :-)

On the calendar: Coffee with my best friend tonight . . . St*rbucks here I come! :-)

Major arrival: Huge congratulations to my friends Christopher and Cecilia. She brought forth a 10 lbs., 4 oz., 22 1/2 inches long baby boy yesterday. With a midwife. At home. Whoa.

Am trying my hand at making homemade French bread today. It is currently in the warm oven for its first rising and I have high hopes. We are having two other couples over for dinner tomorrow night and I'm making pasta with chicken apple sausage (yummmmm!) and, hopefully, homemade French bread. I also have on the "to do" list to make another batch of oatmeal bread, but not sure if I will get to it today. A higher need is to mop the kitchen floor before our company tomorrow night . . . it has rained off and on the last several days and the dogs have left their muddy mark.

If you want to read a great synopsis of Sunday's message from our church, go to MissBev's site. And you are right, the music did go well this week! :-) Anyway, I think it's interesting how two people can hear the same sermon and be struck by totally different things. While MissBev writes mostly about Jesus' encounter with Satan in the wilderness, I have been struck more by the person of John the Baptist and how he lived his life. When I first think of John the Baptist, I think of that weird guy who lived in the wilderness, ate bugs and honey and was just kinda strange. The culture that he was living in was completely corrupt - things like the sacredness of marriage and the value of life were replaced by promiscuousness, immorality, and gross abominations. Hmmmm, sounds familiar to me! John, through his clothing, where he ministered, and his style of ministry all showed that he refused to conform to the culture around him and people took notice. They flocked to him and to hear his message - people of that day were desperate for something other than the sin that surrounded them.

Apply that to today. Does this mean that to make an impact in the 21st century, I need to wear weird clothes and eat bugs. (I can tell you the bug part is NOT happening!) But seriously, do I make a conscious choice to set myself apart in what I wear? Do I wear clothes that sell sexuality and provocativeness or do I choose to clothe myself modestly? Do people see me slip into that R (or maybe even PG or PG-13!) rated movie that "is really okay except for that one sex scene and, oh yeah, there are just a few cuss words, I think." Then there is that TV show - you know, the one that everyone is watching and that guy is in? It doesn't matter that he's living with his girlfriend, they're going to get married this season... In the world's eyes these things are so trivial, but to someone who wants to be identified with the Lamb of God, do I want to invest in the trivial in exchange for the eternal?

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away our sin
The Holy Lamb of God who makes new life begin!