holiday treats don't get any easier than this

I love holiday goodies... but 99% of the time, I will just go without rather than make something with a lot of ingredients, a lot of steps, or a lot of tedium. Enter Peppermint Bark! I defy you to find anything easier to make. You can be the Anti-Betty and still not mess it up. And it's dee-licious! I have made this as gifts for family members preschool teachers before, and they all loved it! Stock up on Christmasy containers when they go on clearance, and you'll already have your teacher gifts for next year planned out. How's THAT for being organized? (Just don't forget where you store said containers...)

Chocolate-Coated (or not) Peppermint Bark

- about 6-8 oz. chocolate candy coating or chocolate chips (OPTIONAL - I think it's tasty and gift-worthy either way)
- 1 lb. vanilla candy coating
- about 3/4 tsp. peppermint extract
- several (5-6?) candy canes or a handful or two of peppermints

Line a large baking sheet with waxed paper. Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave. Spread in a fairly thin layer on the waxed paper. Put in the fridge or freezer until set. (It may curl slightly, but it will go flat again when you add the top layer.) Crush candy canes in a heavy-duty zipper bag with a hammer or the flat side of a meat tenderizer. Melt the vanilla candy coating in the microwave; stir in extract, then crushed candy. Spread in a thicker layer on top of the chocolate. Try not to let your spatula or spoon touch the bottom, because the chocolate will melt a little. Put back in the fridge until good and set again. Peel the bark off the waxed paper and break into pieces.

Merry eating!

advent: waiting and preparing for Christmas (matthew 25:1-12)

[Click to read Part 1 and Part 2 of my Advent mini-series, and please check out the list of Advent resources in the sidebar if you haven't already.]

Today we’ll look at our third and final Bible story to try and glean something about waiting and preparing during Advent. (I almost feel like I’m back in seminary, working on a three-part sermon…) Interestingly – and not coincidentally, I might add – it is located just before the parable of the talents in Matthew (remember that last time we looked at the parable of the pounds, which is Luke’s recording of a very similar parable).

[Jesus said,] “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” (Matthew 25:1-12, NRSV)

First-century Mediterranean wedding celebrations were long ordeals. There was a party at the groom’s father’s house, a party at the bride’s father’s house, and then, the big moment came when the groom took the bride from her father’s house to his house. In this story, the bridesmaids, or young, marriageable girls, were waiting at the groom’s house to greet him and his party when they arrived. That was their place; it was what was expected of them. And in Jesus’ culture, it was extremely shameful to not do something expected of you in your social position – shameful not only to you, but to your whole family. Another thing about Jesus’ culture, as The Social-Science Commentary of the Synoptic Gospels (one of my favorite resources!) puts it, is that “‘on time’ is whenever the significant personage arrives” (pg. 123). You’ll notice that the foolish bridesmaids didn’t blame the groom for being late. Rather, they shouldered the blame – and the consequences – for being unprepared.

The moral of the story is pretty clear: Get what you need before the time comes. (And get it for yourself, because nobody else can get it for you.) While this parable and the ones surrounding it, including the parable of the talents, are about the forthcoming Kingdom of God, we can still apply them to Advent. In Advent, we know when the waiting will be over, the “day and the hour.” December 25 is marked on our calendars and in our hearts. That would make it even more embarrassing, actually, to be unprepared when the time comes! But we’re not talking about running out of spare tiny light bulbs for the Christmas tree here. What do we need to be ready to celebrate Christmas – as God expects of us?

Let’s think. I’ve already mentioned how busy this time of year usually is, and now I’ve given you a whole other list of things to do. I think time would be number one on my list of things I need! I also need focus: even while I’m busy doing the more mundane or more stressful things on my schedule, I need to keep my mind anchored to God. What else is needed? I’m not going to answer that any further; it might be different for each of us. I am going to leave you to think about what you need. What is the “oil” to your proverbial “lamp?”

To review: as we go through this Advent season, we’re going to do several things while we wait to observe the birth of Christ. We’re going to worship and pray (see part 1), we’re going to get ourselves organized (also part 1), we’re going to use our gifts to do God’s business (part 2), and we’re going to gather whatever we need to do these things (part 3). We have plenty to keep us occupied while we wait, don’t we? But remember, all this leads up to Christmas. Christmas!!!

About this time last year, it seemed like I heard the song “While I’m Waiting” by John Waller every time I turned my car radio to the local Christian music station. It embedded itself in my Advent psyche, and I want to share it with you now. Listen closely to the words (and please ignore the misspelled word… I didn’t do it). There are a couple of interesting juxtapositions of ideas: “I’m hopeful” with “It’s painful,” and “I’m peaceful” with “It’s not easy.” I like that this song doesn’t gloss over the difficulty of waiting, but it also doesn’t let us get dragged down into depression about it, either. Rather, it acknowledges that God gave us amazing hearts and minds that can experience conflicting emotions at the same time. As you listen, think about waiting and preparing for the celebration of Christmas – it’s almost here!

my prayer for today:
Dear Coming Lord,
Despite my desire to be a “wise” person, I can see many times in my life when I was clearly foolish – and as a result, I not only let you down, but I also doubtless missed out on good things you wanted to share with me. How many of those times was my foolishness due to lack of preparation! Although I know I am forgiven, it still pains me to think of some of those times… and it pains me more to think that, even now, I probably haven’t fully learned from them. Dear Lord, please help me use my time wisely. Please help me develop the habit of staying focused on you. Please help me keep myself stocked with what I need to experience you fully. No time of year is more special to me than Christmas, and I don’t want to miss out on a single minute of it! Amen.

advent: waiting and preparing for Christmas (luke 19:11-26)

[For "part 1" on Advent, click here. And please notice the links to Advent resources in the right-hand column.]

Today we'll look at another biblical story about waiting and preparing, this one in Luke 19:11-26:

As they were listening to this, he [Jesus] went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. So he said, "A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return. He summoned ten of his slaves, and gave them ten pounds, and said to them, 'Do business these until I come back.' But the citizens of his country hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, 'We do not want this man to rule over us.' When he returned, having received his royal power, he ordered these slaves, to whom he had given the money, to be summoned so that he might find out what they had gained by trading. The first came forward and said, 'Lord, your pound has made ten more pounds.' He said to him, 'Well done, good slave! Because you have been trustworthy in a very small thing, take charge of ten cities.' Then the second came, saying, 'Lord, your pound has made five pounds.' He said to him, 'And you, rule over five cities.' Then the other came, saying, 'Lord, here is your pound. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth, for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.' He said to him, 'I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! You knew, did you, that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest.' He said to the bystanders, 'Take the pound from him and give it to the one who has ten pounds.' (And they said to him, 'Lord, he has ten pounds!') 'I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.'" (NRSV)

You may know this parable a little better in Matthew 25, where it is the parable of the talents. But I chose for us to look at Luke’s version of this story for two reasons: One, in Luke’s version, each servant is given the same amount of money to start with, so they all have equal opportunity. Two, in Luke, the master specifically says, “Do business with these until I come back,” whereas in Matthew the master does not give his servants any particular instruction. In both versions, I think our 21st-century minds have a tendency to see the slave who hid the money as a simpleton. But actually, hiding money was a sensible thing to do in Jesus’ day. Matthew 13:44 talks about the “treasure hidden in a field;” burying money was not an uncommon practice. On the other hand, investing money, just like investing in today’s stock market, had the potential to yield either a profit or a loss. That third servant’s not looking quite so stupid now, is he?

But the master didn’t say, “Take care of this money;” he said “do business” with it. The third servant is looking stupid now, but not so much because he hid the money as because he didn’t follow the master’s orders, even though he knew how well the master liked to “reap what he did not sow!” So, of course, his money is taken from him and given to the one who yielded the most from his business.

What does that mean? Is God telling us to go buy stocks? Not quite. God has given all of us gifts. If you are reading this on the Internet, you are wealthy and well-educated by global standards. We all have talents as well. What are we going to do with them? Put them off till after Christmas? No, because another gift God has given us is the present moment. As C.S. Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters (remember that this book is written from the perspective of a demon, so the “Enemy” is God):

The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity… the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time – for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. (p. 76-77 in the 1990 Barbour edition)

The time, quite literally, is now. The Complete Bible Commentary says about Luke 19, “We have a dual assignment: to work, and to wait” (p. 1287). God has invested in us. What will we do with that investment while we wait for his coming? What will we yield?

my prayer for today:
My Lord God,
When I think about how much I have been given, I am humbled beyond words. I live a comfortable life in a world where many people have nothing. I have talents and abilities and opportunities to use them. Lord, I ask for your forgiveness for my fear and laziness, and I ask for your help, strength, and encouragement in this present Advent season, that your gifts to me may yield more of your glory. In the name of the One who is coming, Amen.

i ♥ ...

We interrupt this series of posts on Advent and Christmas to bring you something almost totally different (well, it does involve a baby)...

"I ♥ Tooshies" Week at i ♥ faces!

At first, I wasn't going to participate this week, being all but cameraless until I get a new one. But then I remembered this shot I took of my friend's baby granddaughter when we met up at the beach this past summer. I absolutely loved taking pictures of her (I don't often get to photograph girls!). She was just shy of a year old at the time, and she was bound and determined to get into that beach chair. It took some serious effort, but she did it - and she provided me with the opportunity to take this funny photo!

Be sure to check out more cheeky goodness at

advent: waiting and preparing for Christmas (luke 24, acts 1)

[I have added a list of links to Advent resources over on the right. I will add to it if/as I find more. If you know of something, please leave me a comment to let me know!]

Yesterday marked the first day of Advent, 2009. Which begs the question, what exactly is Advent? Different churches observe it in different ways, or not at all, so I’m going to give you a moment to define Advent for yourself. What is Advent to you? What Advent traditions have you experienced?

(Go ahead, think for a minute. I’ll wait.)

Wikipedia defines Advent as “a season of the Christian church, the period of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus, in other words, the period immediately before Christmas.”

Let’s look first at that “waiting” part. Remember what it was like to be a child, waiting for Christmas to come? For me, every classic Christmas cartoon on TV (waaaaay back, in the days before VCRs, when you only got to see them once each year), every Christmas commercial, every piece of chocolate out of the Advent calendar, and every well-known Christmas hymn sung in church pointed the way and increased my excitement as that most magical of days approached. I can remember a few distinct Christmas Eves, being in bed at one or the other of my grandparents’ houses, too excited to sleep. I believe there’s a reason God gives us these childhood experiences: I think it’s training for our adult practice of Advent. When we can do like Jesus said and “become like a little child” (I just keep coming back to that, don't I?), we can experience Advent at its fullest.

I don’t mean that we should just be really excited while we wait for Christmas, though I deeply hope we will experience childlike excitement. But Advent is not about waiting for the sake of waiting, waiting because there’s nothing else to do. God expects us use this time, to do something with this waiting period. Quite frankly, I’m glad of that. You all know I’m terrible at waiting. It never fails that if I forget to take a book with me to a doctor’s appointment, they will be running behind, and I’ll have to wait a long time. It’s always torture. God works in mysterious ways, but I think we can be fairly certain that torture isn’t what Advent is for. This is where the “preparation” part comes in: the “Advent Waiting Room” is full of things, not just to help the time pass by, but to prepare us for what’s coming next.

The Bible gives us examples of things to do while we wait, tools to help us prepare. We’re going to look at three over my next few posts. Today’s comes from the books of Luke and Acts. As you may know, biblical scholars are about 99.9% sure that Luke and Acts were written by the same person, and that they are actually more like two volumes of the same story than two separate books. So for this example, we’re going to read the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts as if the Gospel of John were not in between them.

The scene is Jesus’ last appearance to the gathered disciples, just before his Ascension. Luke 24:33 tells us that “the eleven and their companions” were all together in Jerusalem. Verse 49 picks up the tail end of Jesus’ speech:

"...And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God. (Luke 24:49-53, NRSV)

Now we'll flip over to the first chapter of Acts. The first few paragraphs are a re-cap of the end of Luke, with a few new details. We’re going pick up the story at verse 12:

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.

In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about one hundred twenty persons) and… [Peter explained that they should choose a person to replace Judas as one of “The Twelve,” and they nominated two people, and then they prayed and cast lots to choose Matthias as the new 12th disciple.] (Acts 1:12-15, plus ultra-condensed 16-26)

So, here we have the disciples in Jerusalem, where Jesus had told them to wait until the Holy Spirit came to them. One hundred twenty people, together, waiting. Waiting, but not sitting around doing nothing. Not napping, reading books, or playing on the Internet, which are my favorite ways to pass the time. Instead, Luke 24:53 tells us that “they were continually in the temple blessing God.” Acts 1:14 says that they “were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” And Acts 1:15-26 tells us that they re-organized themselves.

In short, the first disciples were not just waiting; they were also doing that other major word in the definition of Advent – they were preparing for the next part of their lives in Christ. They prepared themselves in a spiritual way by worshiping and praying, and they prepared themselves in a practical way by getting re-organized.

The worshiping and praying parts are pretty self-explanatory, I think; the challenge there is to do them “constantly” and “continually.” Turning every moment into a moment of worship and prayer - prayer “without ceasing” as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 – is a lesson not just for Advent, but for all the year. What about that getting re-organized bit, though? You know that’s a constant endeavor for me; how about you? Is it even more of a challenge than constant prayer? Impossible, maybe? How can we organize, or re-organize, ourselves as individuals?

I’ve written about this several times before, but here is specifically how I think it applies to us at Advent-time in the year 2009. When we worship and pray, we get our hearts in order. But we also need to get our lives in order, so that we won’t be too distracted by the chaos around us to properly receive the coming Christ. Somehow, this is the easiest time of year to become overwhelmed. I remember getting really ticked off at the end of almost every fall semester in college, and even more in seminary, that I couldn’t completely enjoy Christmas-time because I was too bogged down with research papers and final exams. Of course, it would have been slightly less bad if I didn’t always put these things off until the last minute. Nowadays, I’m not cramming my head full of academia, but I still have a long list of something to do every December. I’d be willing to bet we’re all like that. I’m not saying we should turn down all Christmas party invitations, or refuse to make 8 dozen cookies for the reception after the children’s Christmas pageant, or anything else we do at this time of year. But we need to know our limits (and our calling!), and we need to keep ourselves organized, so that we can pray and worship without ceasing, and so that we can truly celebrate Christmas. Completely losing our minds somewhere around December 14th will not help us to receive Christ as God’s gift.

Next time we’ll see what Luke 19:11-26 has to say about waiting and preparing, so please come back! In the meantime, I’d really-really-really love for you to leave me some comments with your thoughts on Advent and/or your favorite Advent/Christmas traditions!

my prayer for today:
Dear God,
Another Advent season is here. Thank you for bringing me, once again, to this time of year, and for all the people who have taught me what Advent means and introduced me to different Advent traditions. Thank you for each person who reads these words and journeys with me toward Christmas. As we wait and prepare to celebrate your Incarnation, I will borrow words from “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” to ask you:

O come, thou Wisdom from on high,
And order all things far and nigh;
To us the path of knowledge show,
And cause us in her ways to go.

In the name of Emmanuel – God who was, and is, and will be with us,
Amen.

for your thursday

As I was going through old CDs this morning (trying to find the perfect soundtrack to my house-cleaning, but in reality making a bigger mess), I realized that this song is perfect for Thanksgiving - at least, for my kind of Thanksgiving. This album ("Don't Censor Me" by Audio Adrenaline) came out when I was a senior in high school... I feel old. Yet not too old to play some football.



Enjoy your day.

i ♥ faces: autumn beauty