I'm baaaaaack

Apparently I have been on a blogging hiatus for almost exactly a year. Wow! I didn't have internet access for almost 9 months of that, but now I am joyful to report I do :)  I am a mom now! 

I plan on blogging about topics like marriage, motherhood, nutrition, the Bible, infant pottying, breastfeeding, herbal medicine, .....

God is good!

"Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." 

And He told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, 'You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.'   (Is this sounding like anyone/any country you know yet?)

But God to said to him, 'You fool! This very night your soul will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' This is how it will be with anyone who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."

Then He said to His disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

...Do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek His kingdom and these things will be given to you as well. 

Do not be afraid, little flock! for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Luke 12.

How to Know God- by Elisabeth Elliot

The order of the Christian's assignment is: hear, do, know. If we hear the commandments and obey them, the Father will make Himself known to us. It is no use trying to know Him without doing what He says. To listen to one word and go out and obey it is better than having the most exalted "religious experience," for it puts us in touch with God Himself--it is a willed response.

"If you really love Me, you will keep the commandments I have given you." It is perilously easy to imagine that we love God because we like the idea of God, or because we feel drawn to Him. The only valid test of love is obedience. Take one thing commanded and start doing it. Take one thing forbidden and stop doing it. Then we are on the sure road to knowing God. There is no other.

"You are My friends, if you do what I command you" (Jn 15:14 NEB).

"The man who has received My commands and obeys them--he it is who loves Me: and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father; and I will love him and disclose Myself to him" (Jn 14:21). There is the order: hear, do, know.

Bible study tool

This is one of my favorite study tools of all time. If you are reading a certain passage of the Bible, click "Hebrew" for the Old Testament or "Greek" for the New Testament. Type in the English word you want to know more about, and usually a few different Hebrew/Greek words will come up. http://www.studylight.org/lex/

Example: Romans 1.5: "Through Him and for His name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith." Click Greek: Type in "grace": Open new pages for the 2 words that come up: eu)preÑpeia and xa/riv. For xa/riv, it is defined as:

1. grace
a. that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness: grace of speech
2. good will, loving-kindness, favour
a. of the merciful kindness by which God, exerting his holy influence upon souls, turns them to
Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles
them to the exercise of the Christian virtues
3. what is due to grace
a. the spiritual condition of one governed by the power of divine grace
b. the token or proof of grace, benefit, a gift of grace, benefit, bounty
4. thanks, (for benefits, services, favours), recompense, reward

Then it will show you every verse where this Greek word is used (click on book name). You can explore this tool forever!! :)

Just like a bakery's Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are some cookies I just tried today from www.allrecipes.com  (by far my favorite cooking website!!!)

2 cups all purpose flour               1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda             1 tablespoon vanilla 

1/2 teaspoon salt                   1 egg

3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted        1 egg yolk

1 cup packed brown sugar             1 1/2 cups of chocolate chunks

1. Melt the butter in a small pan.

2. In a small bowl, whisk flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in vanilla, egg and egg yolks until light and creamy (about 3 minutes). Mix in the dry ingredients by hand and then stir in chocolate chips. 

4. Refrigerate for one hour. 

5. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper. 

6. Drop 1/4 cup of dough on cookie sheets about 3 inches apart (6 cookies to a sheet). They will be big! Should make about 14 large cookies.

7. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly browned (don't be alarmed if they look cakey- they will fall and turn out beautiful). Cool on sheets for a few minutes. 

Delicious! The big size makes them look professional. The taste too :) 

Cosmetics Database

This website is one of the reasons I wanted to start this blog- because there are many great websites that I love and that are so helpful. You can search soap, shampoo, nail polish, make up, etc. products and see how safe this esearch group deems them to be.

http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/

"Skin Deep pairs ingredients in more than 25,000 products against 50 definitive toxicity and regulatory databases, making it the largest integrated data resource of its kind. Why did a small nonprofit take on such a big project? Because the FDA doesn't require companies to test their own products for safety."

Learn what you are exposing your body to from the things you use on a daily basis (scary!!). It will list for you ingredients in this product and what they are linked to- i.e. cancer, reproductive toxicity, violations, restrictions & warnings, etc. Then it will give a rating to each of the main ingredients with its hazard score- i.e. fragrance (which you will find in almost everything!) is completely unregulated and can be a coverup for all sorts of dangerous things. It has a hazard score of 8 out of 10- high and very dangerous.

Or, if you want to find the safest kind of shampoo, for instance, search shampoo and then sort by "hazard score".

"If You are willing, take this cup from Me."

I have been reading C.S. Lewis’ “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer”. He makes a most interesting point that I have never considered about Christ “sharing in our humanity" (Hebrews 2.14).

“Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ… In Gethsemane a very strange and significant thing seems to have happened.

It is clear from many of His sayings that our Lord had long foreseen His death. He knew what conduct such as His, in a world such as we have made of this, must inevitably lead to. But it is clear that this knowledge must somehow have been withdrawn from Him before He prayed in Gethsemane. He could not, with whatever reservation about the Father’s will, have prayed that the cup might pass and simultaneously known that it would not. This is both a logical and a psychological impossibility. You see what this involves? Lest any trial incident to humanity should be lacking, the torments of hope- of suspense, anxiety- were at the last moment loosed upon Him- the supposed possibility that, after all, He might, He just conceivably might, be spared the supreme horror.

But for this last hope against hope, and the consequent tumult of the soul, the sweat of blood, perhaps He would not have been very Man.

To live in a fully predictable world is not to be a man.

We all try to accept with some sort of submission our afflictions when they actually arrive. But the prayer in Gethsemane shows that the preceding anxiety is equally God’s will and equally part of our human destiny. The perfect Man experienced it. And the servant is not greater than the master.”

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Luke 22.42