Finishing Well

I love the sage-like wisdom of men and women who have lived long with the Lord.

This message, "Four Essentials to Finishing Well," by Jerry Bridges (at age 77) is full of gentle, biblical, practical, and encouraging words of wisdom.

Worth hearing.

People and Force Feeding

I just read this article, called "What Has Helped You In Your Troubles?"

With great wisdom, it offers the #1 and #2 answers to that question, and it offers a thought-provoking view of turning to the Bible, when you least feel like it.

I'd recommend reading it if you have any troubles or if you know someone who does.

Corn Pancakes and Frustration

I love the corn pancakes at Maria’s Café. So today when I had a little extra time at home and some Iowa-grown corn in the fridge, I had the inspiration of finding a similar recipe to make for lunch.

A few searches online and I found exactly what I was looking for. The author of the recipe even referenced the fabulous corn pancakes of Maria’s Café, so I knew I had hit the nail on the head.

Corn, flour, sugar, baking powder, milk, pinch of salt. All the basic ingredients you would expect. I blended them up and dropped the first spoonfuls on my hot griddle with eager expectation.

My impatience got the better of me, and I tried to flip the first pancake a little too soon. A spoonful of corn goo adhered to my spatula. A brown crust remained stuck on the griddle. And no sign of actual cake-ness was evident. That was when I had an inkling that these pancakes might not be as easy as your typical Aunt Jemima’s Buttermilk.

I tried a wide variety of other spatulas, thinking that a thinner model might slide more smoothly beneath the golden cakes. Goo. All goo.

I scrubbed all the spatulas and decided the griddle was probably the problem. I switched to a newer pan, added a touch of butter to grease the skids (so to speak), and now made only one pancake at a time, so as to optimally assess its flipping time.

Still no dice. A very thin golden layer would crumple up as I scooped, but no baking, no rising, just a big lump of corn goo.

I decided that some additional flour might be just the ticket. This proved more promising, as (for the first time) I was able to flip the pancake and maintain a circular form. But still, despite lovely golden, crusty edges, the middle was goo.

I added further flour (and my husband came into the kitchen, intrigued by the conundrum. And probably hungry). We let the pancakes cook longer on both sides, until it seemed impossible to consider goo still remaining in the middle.

Ben cut up the latest version and ate it with butter and syrup. “Good!” he said. “The center is just as gooey as the others, but the flavor is nice.”

My afternoon was pretty well shot, and my patience for these little corn cakes had run out. I ate a bagel and stuck the rest of the batter in the fridge (the optimist in me, I guess).

Frustrated. I don’t like wasting food, I don’t like wasting time, and this was a combo platter of both.

And my mind turned to our friends who are serving the Lord in Thailand. We got to skype with them this morning, and their story today was a string of questions, interruptions, disappointments in ministry, and waiting to see how God was going to work for good in their messy relational endeavors. Were they failing? Was their work just a big waste of time and energy?

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body (2 Corinthians 4:8-10).

Paul, I think, grappled with the same kind of puzzle. From the outside, they were afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down, and dying like Jesus. But he didn’t label that “failure.”

Rather, he exulted.

For this slight, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things which are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).

There’s a lesson for me, I think. My craving for immediate gratification and happy endings to the short chapters of my life are not always God’s way. He uses the things that I would label failure, worthless, a waste for a long-distance glory of unfathomable value.

May we learn to wait and hope in Him.

The Organized Heart

I read a blurb from this new book, and it made me very interested to read the whole thing.

Maybe you'd be interested in checking it out too.

The point is that clutter, stress, and disorganization are not mostly problems to be solved with planners, color-coding, and storage units but things to point us back to walking in the grace of God and having a free and well-ordered heart. Good thoughts to ponder.

First Time

In my almost-30-years of life, I've probably owned literally dozens of Bibles of various translations and sizes.

Here is a really cool snapshot of some people getting a Bible in their heart language for the first time.

Makes me realize how ridiculously rich I am to so easily, even flippantly, grab a copy of God's own Word.



HT: Justin Taylor

Family Worship

I just finished listening to this message by Joel Beeke on leading family worship.

In my assessment, his presentation is not fancy or flashy, but what an earnest love for God and for his family is evident, and how it made me thank God for my own parents... and want to be a godly mother, if God gives us children.

HT: Desiring God

'Til Death Do Us Part

I'd like to show this video to women who reject the notion of a husband as the head of the home and a wife's responsibility to submit to him. It is a beautiful picture of what a servant leader really looks like.

Background: In 1990 Robertson McQuilkin resigned his post as president of Columbia Bible College and Graduate School, in order to care for his beloved wife Muriel, who stopped recognizing him in 1993 and went to be with the Lord in 2003 at the age of 81.



You can also read two articles and an interview about Robertson at Justin Taylor's blog.

HT: Justin Taylor