Krissy's Creations--Button Pretzels

Sometimes it's fun to let the little ones make their own snacks. This one is so simple--my four and five year-olds can do almost all the work. Krissy (age five) and cousin Grady (age four) made these today.

Take square pretzels and place a Hershey's Hug on the center of each one. Place in 200 degree oven for four minutes. They will retain their shape, but will come out soft. Place an M & M on the center of each and press down slightly. I usually stick them in the fridge for a bit to harden them up because the kids want to eat them right away. You can use Hershey's Kisses too, but they don't get as shiny and are not quite as pretty.

Salted Chocolate Caramel Turtles

I made these this afternoon and they turned out so good!

Here is the recipe for these fabulous looking treats:

Ingredients

8 ounces pecans
14 ounce bag of caramels
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
10 ounce bag of dark chocolate chips
3-4 ounces white chocolate
Fleur de Sel (Sea Salt)

1. Line baking sheet with parchment paper and arrange in clusters of 5-6 pecans. Place under broiler for 90 seconds to toast.
2. Unwrap caramels and heat with milk and vanilla until melted. I used a double boiler to avoid burning them.
3. Spoon caramel mixture over pecan clusters and let stand until caramel hardens, at least thirty minutes.
4. Melt chocolate chips. I used the double boiler for this again. Reserve 1/4 cup of chocolate. Spoon the rest over caramel layer.
5. Let stand until firm--about thirty minutes again.
6. Chop up white chocolate and melt in microwave. Spoon over chocolate layer.
7. Put reserved chocolate in a sealed plastic bag and cut a tiny hole in the corner; then drizzle over white chocolate. I did it this way, but I think next time I will just drizzle it with a spoon.
8. Sprinkle with Fleur de Sel. 

Seven Rules for Proper Grandparenting

Rule 1—Exercise  When you first pick up the grandchildren, one of the first things you want to do is make sure they are thoroughly exercised. There are several ways to do this. You can put them through tiring muscle building paces…

…or you can just let them play.

Be sure to let them take little breaks.

Rule 2—Keep the trips short Kids love to travel, but only for about five minutes or so. In order to avoid the constant “When are we going to get there?” and “I have to go potty NOW!” noises, it is best to plan several very short trips. Some kids like to travel by horse.

Others like to travel on the backs of kitties…

…or down slides.

Some prefer the more traditional types of travel.

And then there are the wacky ones who would rather whiz around in a giant banana. 

Rule 3—Take a Walk  In case the exercise and travel have not quite worn them out, it is always a good idea to talk a walk outside. 

Rule 4—Be Prepared For Anything  You never know what they might find… 

Fortunately for the children, my dog found this snake first, so it is quite dead. Not so fortunate for the snake.

Rule 5—Let them help make their own food. Children will be much more likely to eat their fruits and vegetables if they play a part in making it. In this case, they made palm trees.

Rule 6—Dinner and a Movie Not just for adults. Kids love eating while they watch something good on TV. Here we are eating pizza and palm trees while watching Little House on the Prairie. 

Rule 7—Sugar Them Up This is where most grandparents can use a little guidance. The tendency is to sugar them up too early in the game. The time to sugar them up is just before you take them home.

Now they are ready to get in the car and get back to mom and dad.

The perfect ending to a perfect day. 

Easy Beer Bread--1 Hour from Start to Finish

Are you running late and would like to have warm home-baked bread for dinner? You can make this bread in the time it takes to pre-heat the oven. Bake for 50-60 minutes and it's done!

Ingredients:

3 cups self-rising flour*
1/4 cup sugar
12 oz. beer

*If you do not have self-rising flour, you will need to add 1 T. Baking powder and 1 1/2 tsp. salt.

Directions:

Mix ingredients together and place in greased bread pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes. The crust will be hard and the inside soft.

The kind of beer you use will change the flavor, so experiment a bit. I have made this with Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade and put 1/2 cup of craisins in it for a sweeter taste. It's really good and so easy to make in a pinch!
 

When Grace Comes Disguised as a Thorn

No doubt we have all read about the Apostle Paul’s thorn in the flesh. While Paul does not tell us explicitly what the thorn was, there are some things we know about it. We know that it was a gift. He tells us a thorn was given me in the flesh. A messenger of Satan applied the thorn, but the thorn was a gift from Christ. We know this because the thorn was given to him to keep him from being conceited. Satan would have rejoiced to see Paul overcome by conceit.  How it must have galled Satan to be used by God as an instrument in Paul’s sanctification! We do not normally think of demons being used to prevent humans from sinning, but Paul is pretty explicit here “a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.”

False apostles in the church at Corinth tried to build up their credentials by falsely reporting spiritual experiences and ecstasies. At the same time, they tried to discredit Paul because Paul had not shared any such experiences. In fact, Paul appeared very weak in person. But Paul did have an experience—a revelation that surpassed anything that the false apostles could even imagine. He had gone to the highest level of heaven and seen things no man had ever seen. We can only imagine the temptation to put these false apostles in their place. They were destroying Paul’s reputation, his ministry, and his message. The church listened to them and refused to commend Paul. From a human standpoint, all Paul had to do was tell about his own revelations and reveal what he was commanded not to reveal and the problem would be solved. He could vindicate himself and put the false apostles in their place by doing this one thing. He could save his ministry. No doubt Satan keeps whispering this in the Apostle’s ear: “You are God’s special boy. Go ahead and tell. It will save your reputation and your ministry. God won’t punish you.”

The thorn stops Paul from considering this temptation. It is a constant reminder that he does not need to brag about his experiences to build up his ministry.  God and God alone builds the ministry. We know Paul's thorn was both painful and humiliating. We also know this: The false apostles were given no such thorn. Their pride and arrogance would be their undoing. God was letting them go their own way. 

We often think of grace as the beautiful, fragrant, feel-good part of the Christian walk--like a rose. But grace can come disguised as a thorn. We may have problems that are painful or humiliating, problems that seem to never end. We may even convince ourselves that it is the devil himself tormenting us. But every pain and every humiliation comes from the hand of a Redeemer who is far more concerned about our holiness than our happiness. In the end, it is all grace—even the thorns.

Friendship in the Body of Christ

My sister sent me a plaque for my birthday one year that said, "God made us sisters; Prozac made us friends." We laugh because we see the truth in this--we can't choose our siblings. C. S. Lewis writes about friendship between believers in a similar way. When you see his point of view, it becomes obvious that in church at least, you don't get to choose your friends. They have been chosen for you by One who put you together for a higher purpose. Here is what Lewis says:

Friendship, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is spiritual, and therefore faces a subtler enemy, it must, even more wholeheartedly than they, invoke the divine protection if it hopes to remain sweet. For consider how narrow its true path is. It must not become what people call a ‘mutual admiration society;’ yet if it is not full of mutual admiration, of Appreciative love, it is not Friendship at all.

For a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to his disciples, ‘Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.’ The friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare hope, who sometimes does, and always should preside. Let us not reckon without our Host. 

Seeing relationships this way changes everything. No longer can we boast about our good taste in friends. No longer can we avoid the ones we would never choose. We share a DNA that transcends all barriers--we are the body of Christ. . In the church, God makes us brothers and sisters and the Holy Spirit uses our relationships to help us conform to the image of Christ. That is the goal.

Is Archaeology the Grammar of Scripture?

I was recently in a class where the instructor said that archaeology is the grammar of Scripture. What he meant was that in order to understand the Scriptures, one needed a solid grounding in archaeology. In other words, we needed to examine the Scriptures in the light of, or under the lens of archaeology. He criticized the Puritans because of their "nascent understanding of covenant theology."  They simply did not have the tools we have today for understanding these things.

While the Puritans did not have access to some of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other artifacts we have today, they did have something that many pastors lack today, and that was a deep reverence for Sola Scriptura.  The only lens that Puritans used for examining the Scriptures was Scripture itself. They understood that the lens is the ultimate authority. If archaeology is the lens, then archaeology becomes the standard by which the truth of Scripture is evaluated. If science is the lens, then science is the standard by which truth is determined. If philosophy is the lens, then Scripture is subject to the whims of philosophers. It is only when Scripture is the lens that we can view Scripture through the eyes of God himself. To the Puritans, the Holy Spirit was the great Illuminator of the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit was sufficient.

Applying a non-biblical grid to Scripture and forcing Scripture to conform to that grid changes the meaning of everything. It should have come as no surprise then, when later in the class, the instructor told us that divorce was not a sin, that God did not hate divorce, that we need not set aside a day of the week for the Lord, and that the Ten Commandments did not apply to believers today. In the back of my mind I heard a familiar whisper: Did God really say...?

Eve heard the same thing in the Garden of Eden. The tree of life contained all the necessary stuff of life. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil had all that and more. Satan always tries to lure us by making us think that God is cheating us, that Satan can give us a better deal. He promises something more, but in the end it leads to death. Eve was right when she saw that the tree was good for obtaining wisdom. Everything about that tree looked good and much of it was good. It was the extra stuff that brought us down.

The same temptation is present for us when teachers cleverly attempt to lure us away from Scripture by offering us the Scriptures and more. In this class, the extras came in the form of archaeology, Greek, and philosophy. But rather than pull us deeper into the Scriptures, the extras distracted us from the Scriptures. The extras supposedly held the key that would break the code of Scripture. Yet we spent precious little time reading the Scriptures at all.

Archaeology is not the grammar of Scripture. Logos, the spoken Word, is the grammar of Scripture, and the Scriptures are very simple to understand. They are not written in code and we do not need a key to decode them. Nor do we need a pope or a bishop or a priest or a pastor to tell us what to believe. The Word and the Spirit are sufficient. And the pastor who teaches his congregation to trust in these two things alone is a true shepherd of the sheep. Beware of those who offer you all this and more.