An Exclusive Preview !

You read it here first! Finally...your exclusive preview of our long overdue Harvest Church Website! Many thanks to Paula Lynch, for her hours upon hours of artistic endeavor. Though still a work in progress, I think our new website is also a work of art. I hope you agree.

http://www.harvestchurch1.com/

Rejoice with me - I'm thrilled at the thought that Harvest Church is joining the 21st century!

And of course, if you are ever in the Knoxville, Tennessee area, do come see us one Sunday. You'll find our worship to be passionate, the atmosphere one of relaxed hospitality, and the preaching of the word is best described as "grace on fire". God so loves to do the impossible, by using the imperfect. At Harvest, we are continually about the business of being imperfectly perfectly His, and doing impossibly possible things.

Harvest is as much a lifestyle as it is a church. You really do have to experience it to know what I am talking about. You are warmly invited...

A Triumph, If I Do Say So Myself...

I have a recipe to share with you…one that is my very own.

Each year, I make several loaves of cranberry orange bread. Each year, I’ve never been quite satisfied with the results…until this year. (In previous years, the bread was always either too dry, or not orangey enough to suit me, or not sweet, or always something that wasn’t quite right.)

I finally tweaked all the various recipes I’ve used over the years, and came up with what is truly the best cranberry orange bread. Um - in my ever so humble opinion.

This one is worth making just for the smell of it, when you are mixing it all together. The freshly grated orange peel, combined with the fresh cranberries (I’d always used dried cranberries until this year) is an intoxicant. The orange peel is the biggest hassle to grate – you have to be careful not to get the white “pith” part, just the surface orange part – but so well worth it. Have fun with this one, and feel free to tweak THIS recipe….make it "yours"....but, if you have not made cranberry orange bread before, I recommend that you make it exactly as follows first…then, make notes as to your opinion of the results, and if it needs something different, you then tweak it to your taste the next time you bake it.

I upped the sugar, upped the salt, changing it to coarse salt, which I vastly prefer. When you use coarse salt, you need more…if you use regular table salt, reduce the amount listed by half, to about ½ a tsp.

I drained and then pureed a can of mandarin oranges instead of the usual plain orange juice, used fresh cranberries rather than dried, and because of that, reduced the amount of cranberries. Fresh cranberries are bitter, and I prefer the bread to be a little more sweet. I also omitted all spices such as clove or nutmeg. That is enough of a “tweak” to make this my own recipe.

Also, I could have said something like "1/4 cup vegetable oil" instead of 5 T. But I just added the oil, by tablespoons, until it all "looked right". The count was 5. So sue me. I went with it.


2 cups all purpose flour

2/3 - 3/4 cup sugar, to taste

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp coarse salt, if desired

4 tsp grated orange peel - this takes about 2 good sized oranges to obtain

1 – 11 oz. can mandarin oranges, drained and pureed in the blender, enough to make ¾ cup orange “juice”

5 T vegetable oil

1 egg

1 heaping cup fresh cranberries, sliced in half or coarsely chopped (I also just stick these in the blender and “chop” them that way…)

1/2 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans)

1. In a large bowl, stir together the flours, the sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

2. In another bowl, whisk together the oil, orange peel, mandarin orange “juice”, and egg. Add this mixture to the flour mixture, stirring the two mixtures just enough to moisten the dry ingredients.

3. Fold in the cranberries and nuts, and pour the batter into a greased 9 X 5 X 3 inch loaf pan, or several mini loaf pans, filling half-way.

4. Bake the bread in a preheated 350 degree oven for 1 hour (about 45 minutes if you're using mini loaf pans). Cool before slicing.

Happy Holler-days

Isn't my man the most handsome? (fanning myself...)

Yours truly, and Pastor Tim, and Rambo-Beenie

I'm not a huge fan of "the holidays". I've been known to call them "holler-days". I've even been known to remark....ah...something along the lines of the "homogeonized, depersonalized, soul-less commercialization of what could otherwise be simple and beautiful."

Something like that.

::cough::

But I'm not a "bah-humbug" by a long shot. Each and every year, the Lord and I manage to pull off a 'whacking' celebration (I'm told that means "large, big") complete with deep thoughts, tears of joy, and some secret desire of my heart met in spades. This inner celebration happens in my heart, in spite of all the blow -up synthetic Santas in this world, my teeny tiny gift shopping budget, and every wretched "pretty boy band" who has ever destroyed a traditional Christmas carol. In my mind, odds like those just mentioned are darn-near insurmountable, but with God all things are possible. He simply gives the best gifts, not the least of which is a merry heart.

This world needs to see believers who can enjoy every day-ish sort of life. Um, for that matter, believers need to see believers taking delight in living out an ordinary day. Any moron can enjoy the mountaintop, but it takes a soul set free to enjoy a Monday morning...or a Wednesday afternoon, in the rain, wearing pink rubber boots. This past Sunday, during our time of worship, the Lord spoke to me and said, "In this season of your life, I want you to wake up every morning and ask yourself, 'What would I most enjoy doing today?' ~ and Daughter, that is what I want you to do. I, even your God, will yet enlarge your capacity to enjoy ordinary life, because it is what I want everyone to see. Serve me with outlandish gladness, Dear One."

I got the point. It seemed too good to be true. Wake up, and do what brings me joy. Oh, I still teach my youngest son in our home school, even when he makes me want to bite the head off a bat. I still do laundry. But somehow, deep down, I am learning that I am completely free to have fun in the face of every grief, obstacle, messy job, and what might otherwise become mind-numbing routine. God prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies.

And when I am done eating my fill, my goal is to daintily wipe the corners of my mouth, push my plate away....

...and then get up on that table and dance!

Merry Christmas, ya'll!

Short and To the Point...

"People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood." ~ G.K. Chesterton

I Will Glorify God By Enjoying Him Forever...

To understand anything, you must begin with God Himself. His ideas put the ideas of others into their proper context, and His wisdom trumps all. And so, to grasp the concept of "love"....you have to begin with God, who is love.

I could chapter-and-verse this blog entry. I could approach it all from a very scholarly bent, but I'm too tired. The hour is late, and Sunday morning comes early. I absolutely have to finish this post before the eleven o'clock news, because I am feeling quite sure my energies will vanish in a matter of a half an hour.

So. To sum it all up....love is all about delight. God delights in His creation. He delights in you!

I've been brushing up on my Augustinian doctrine lately, and let me tell you, the man had it going on. He taught that you and I cannot possess full knowlege of anything until we love it. And we do not love it until we delight in it.

Delight is both the cause and the effect of real love. In fact, Augustine said, "There is no enjoyment where there is no love." And, "Who can know how good a thing is if he does not enjoy it?"

Dear reader, God is good, and God is love. Therefore, He is the very essence of contemplative delight. He delights in you and I with a full, contemplated knowlege of precisely what we are like. In the words of the contemporary worship song we sing often at Harvest Church:

"...You see the depths of my heart and You love me the same! You are amazing, God!"

Love begins and ends in enjoyment. That's how we can conceivably give our body to be burned, and have no love. It is possible to go through the motions of martyrdom, and miss the whole point of relationship with God and man: which is to simply enjoy them both, God supremely so. We are patient and kind and not easily provoked, we are not jealous with those in whom we take unbridled delight.

Who and what do you enjoy? Who delights you? What delights you? There you will find your heart.

Amplify It!

From the time I was a young girl, I have loved and savored the Amplified Bible. And from the time I knew what the Amplified Version was, I have loved and savored Hebrews 13:5 ~

He [God] Himself has said, I will not in any way fail you nor give you up nor leave you without support. [I will] not, ][I will] not, [I will] not in any degree leave you helpless nor forsake nor let [you] down (relax My hold on you)! [Assuredly not!]

Could it be more clear? Is He ever going to not be there when I call? Will I find that He has stepped away, even if for but a moment? A spllllllllit second? (...the first draft, I wrote "spit second" - and that is almost the same amount of chronological time...)

He will not! He will not! He will not! Assuredly not. He cannot in any degree back down, step away, or be slack in his immediate nearness and complete committment to my soul restoration. He is fully available, forever at work but never "busy", having all the time in this world and the next for me, as though I were His favorite and only child. Every day. Every moment. God Himself.

Yeah, you could say I'm pretty secure. I am possessed of Security Amplified. Security squared...or cubed...or something. All I know, is I can rest.

Chapter IV, In Which God Laughs, (having something to do with Pink Hair...)

You'll forgive me, if I've been reading Winnie-the-Pooh, by AA Milne. If I had a shrink, who knew Children's Literature, it would come Highly Recommended for stress. Alas, I haven't a shrink - but I myself know Children's Lit'rature. I read and laugh, and laugh and read, and find myself reflected in the antics of Piglet, Pooh, Owl, and yes, even sometimes Eeyore.

All the chapters begin much like the title of this blog: chapter thus-and-so, in which Tigger comes to the forest and has Breakfast...

Breakfast, with a capital "B". One must capitalize certain words, when writing about stuffed animals, or else it simply ceases to be Funny.

I was at Wal-Mart Superstore yesterday. "It was a blustery day", and that is not a plagearism of AA Milne's Own Words...though they are his. Ahem. Anyways, picture rain...and more rain....and more rain. A cold rain. A windy rain. I was in the consequential Bad Mood because of it. I had to slosh about my end of town in my rain gear and stretchy pants. Used to being Rather Fashionable, I was having a no good, terribly bad day. I had much to purchase in way of provisions, feeling exhausted for No Good Reason, and had no one to help...

...and so I was grumbley.

I happened to spy a woman in Wal-Mart who was Fashionably Dressed. I, who never feel a pang of envy, wondered what that hot spot was in my chest....could it....could it be....no, it couldn't be. Not I. But there she was - red knit dress peeking out from underneath the perfect trench coat, with the belt wrapped about the waist and tied "just so"; her brunette hair was wound into an elegant chignon (all that rain, you see, what's a Raven-Haired Barbie to do with her voluptuous mane?) and she wore high heeled, black boots. She was perfection, stepping smartly down the toilet paper aisle.

I sniffed at her obvious inexperience with Weather Reports, and hurried on.

It was then I saw the lady with the Pink Hair. Gentle reader, her hair really is a decided shade of brownish pink. But the pink is unmistakeable. You'd do a double-take, too, trust me. And she always wears a pink wool coat. Bubble gum pink.

I say "always", because I would wager that, in the last three winters, I have spied this woman more than a dozen times - in that same pink wool coat, with her pinky-brown long hair. Its a freakish thing, really, for one to always be spotting a woman with Pink Hair, wearing a Pink Coat. It can fray the nerves, actually. I blinked hard, and looked again. Yes. It was her. Again.

I grumbled to myself, "That woman must alllllways be out shopping. I mean, every time I see her, she is out shopping....Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, the shoe store...does she have a job?"

It was then, the Epiphany happened. A still, small, logical voice from deep within said, "I say, aren't you out shopping, whenever you see her out shopping?" Then, I looked straight down at my feet.

Pink rain boots.

I certainly looked just as hilarious, with my grumpy disposition and pink rubber boots. I laughed out loud, and had a Much Better Day.

How quick I can be to judge...