R2C2: The Greatest Pitching Rotation in the Galaxy

We are half way through our amazing rotation and I would have given my right arm to be at the Phils game tonight where Cliff Lee pretty much got a constant standing ovation from the sounds of it. My day was as follows.

Went to grocery store in sweats to buy food for the week. Listened to last night's season opener while cleaning my room and doing laundry. I have a floor again and light bulbs so I can see in my bedroom. Take a nap (unfortunately not successful). Wake up in time for the tonight's game and listened while I made dinner and did more laundry.

On tomorrow's agenda?

Church
More baseball
More Laundry
Main cooking for the week.

I ♥ baseball. Life is good.

My new pot...

Is not actually a pot.

So, it had been a goal of mine during Lent to start making my meals again. I'm only just getting around to it due to some circumstances, but I realized that when I was in college a main staple of my diet was rice. I love rice. But a few months ago I ruined my only pot attempting to cook brown rice, and that was when my plan to cook for myself was pretty thoroughly derailed. I have remedied that by buying a rice cooker. (Someday I will by a new pot I suppose). I am just finishing my first batch and am excited. My crockpot often makes too much for one person and I get tired of leftovers so I hope this will help.

On a related note here are my meals for the week.

Grilled Chicken with rice and asparagus
Italian Chicken and rice and asparagus (the above with pasta sauce and Italian seasoning)
Chicken Cesar Salad
Egg salad and crackers

My rice cooker also has a steamer so I steamed asparagus during the last half of the rice cooking. I love asparagus too but the bunches are big. Maybe I'll add asparagus to my egg salad. Apparently, you can also hard boil eggs in a rice cooker so I am going to try that too.

The rice just finished as I was writing this and it tastes delicious!

What Would Otherwise Be Ordinary...

Just a quick quote from this Sunday's sermon which was talking about what it looks like to abide in Jesus and having Him abide in us from Jn. 15. In the three years I have been here, I have heard a lot of good wisdom about vocation and it is still something I struggle to balance against my life and with my faith. In all my balancing and line drawing, this is what I want to remember and Rev. Bill Haley said it beautifully yesterday morning. He is painting an ideal picture of a day in the life of a woman who abides in Jesus and vice versa. (Transcribed from the audio, mistakes and emphasis mine)

And as she works and she works hard and well, not because she has to, but more importantly because she is putting forth her best effort toward what God has called her to do, like an offering. Like a priest raises a cup of wine and a plate of bread, taking what is ordinary and making it sacred.

Food for thought for the rest of the week: How do you take what is ordinary and make it sacred?

Jump Off Again!

Prayer is the only power which the powerless posses.-John Stott

Well, I'm restarting this blog in hopes of getting back into journaling and sharing this crazy ride I call life with others. So I am just going to jump right in.

I've been mulling over the sermon I heard this past Sunday. One of the readings is my favorite gospel passage in Jn. 9 where Jesus tells the crowds that a blind man was not born blind because of someone's sin, but so that the glory of God could be revealed in that moment in his healing. The other reading was from Acts 12 about the miraculous rescue of Peter from prison. The sermon was the final in a series that was designed to help us as a church prepare for the outcome of our lawsuit with the Episcopal Church, whatever it may be.

The main points I got from it is that we do not know what God will do, in our lawsuit or in our lives, but we do know that it will be for our good (Rom 8:38), and we also know that we are not to be passive about it. It is a battle and if we are not active we can't be fighting. I don't mean that it is a battle for the church property, because it's not really that. Instead it is a spiritual battle for souls and for the message of Christ.

We need to be praying. The young church in Jerusalem was getting the stuffing beat out of them. James was beheaded, (Think about how John, of all people must have felt!), Peter was in prison, and Herod wanted blood. Yet, they met in a room and prayed earnestly for Peter (v.5). Funnily enough they didn't believe that their prayers had been answered at first (v.15), but still even with little faith, their prayers had been answered. In the end Herod was dead, Peter was free, and the Gospel was spreading. Amazing!

So we are called to prayer. I have begun to pray the prayer of St. Francis in my classroom in the morning, to ground myself and prepare for the day. Our Rector has asked that we be praying for the church at noon if we can (I'll have to do it at 12:30), because we know there is power in earnest corporate prayer. It is also the beginning of Lent this week and so thinking about what to fast, be it food or something else, was good.

Regardless of the outcome at the end of our church's long road, I am excited about the doors and possibilities that will be opened up due to our diligence and growth in this time of testing and uncertainty.