This past Lord’s Day we sang Psalm 100 as part of the worship service, and it hit me afresh what a wonderful psalm this is. It reveals so much of the character of our good God.
All people that on earth do dwell. That means everyone. No exceptions. He wants us all.
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice. No mumbling. We are singing to the Lord!
Him serve with mirth, His praise forth tell. Let’s hear some laughter, let’s serve the Lord with merriment. Let’s toast His attributes and clink our glasses in His name!
Come ye before Him and rejoice. Here’s a little repetition, and we need it. No kidding: God wants merry worshipers, happy singing, glad hearts, and jolly rejoicing in His presence by every last person on the planet. Continue reading ‘Old Hundredth’
Things are quiet at my house! My son’s family is visiting my daughter’s family at Oxford, and that makes a grand total of nine children and five adults all under one roof (my niece Brooke is visiting the Merkles as well). They will be celebrating Thanksgiving together and have invited a family from Australia to join them.
They were surprised last year to find out that the British (at least some of them) view our Thanksgiving as an anti-British holiday. That surprised us all. My daughter explained that it had nothing really to do with the British, but all to do with thanking God for His provision. But because the first to celebrate were English people who were leaving town for higher ground, I can see why it could be misunderstood. At any rate, my transplanted kids will be roasting a turkey and serving it up with all the trimmings, some of them carried over in a suitcase.
But here on this side of the ocean we are awaiting the arrival of our twin grandbabies. We will gather today around our table to celebrate the arrival of yet another Sabbath, and who knows? Maybe next Sabbath our twins will be here! Or, perhaps by the first Sabbath in December. Either way, the anticipation is growing. Continue reading ‘Happy Sabbath’
Gearing up for the Sabbath feast is vital if you are going to pull if off. By gearing up, I mean figuring out what’s cookin’ sometime during the week, and then gathering all your ingredients and safely tucking them into your house before Saturday morning. Saturday morning, as we all know, is going to fill up with lots of other things.
This week I am making beef burgundy, one of my faves. We are planning on serving it at the Church Feast this January, so a group of ladies on the planning committee are doing some sample runs at it, checking ingredients, measuring exactly for the recipe we’ll be handing out to all our volunteer cooks.
So I got all my stuff ready yesterday so I could dive in today. Doesn’t seem to matter what kinds of time-saving tips I use, it still takes a couple hours for me to prepare. But it is well worth it. Nevertheless, I have to start early, avoiding the rush, so everything is in the pot and the mess is cleaned up. Doug puts on some jazzy music for me, and I have a Continue reading ‘Sabbath Prep’
We have quite a few baptisms in our church, and families celebrate the occasion in different ways. I’ve been to a few of these gatherings, and I’ve been very impressed at the way some families make it a real occasion. Some extend an invitation to the church at large and ask everyone to bring something, potluck style, to a park or auditorium. Others send out invitations to a few friends and family and have it at (or in)Â their home.
Just a couple of weeks ago we were invited to a celebration held on a Sunday evening instead of right after the service. The parents have southern roots, so they fixed a low country boil for all the guests. This was arranged outside with a camp stove, and after the boil was ready, it was dumped into a big laundry basket and from there onto a big platter. If you’ve never had a low country boil, I should tell you what’s in it: corn on the cob, Continue reading ‘Baptismal Feasts’
Believe me, some days when the Sabbath is approaching, you may feel like it is an impossible task to prepare a Sabbath dinner. I have certainly felt that way before. But the thing that encourages me is thinking that if this truly is an important, potent celebration, I should expect to get resistance. Anything to get me to give up! Remember you will get resistance too. You may feel tired, out of good meal ideas, bored of cooking, or it may be too hot to cook. Whatever the reason, remember that when you overcome your duddiness to prepare a feast for the family, God will not only bless you for it, He will meet you in it and give you the strength to overcome the obstacles. You’ve heard it said that anything worth doing will be difficult at times. I agree. Some of those Sabbath dinners when I felt fresh out of steam or ideas ended up being the sweetest. So do what you need to do to perk yourself up. Read some cookbooks, have a double-shot iced mocha, try a new recipe, eat outside, invite some friends to potluck with you, go to a park. And if you really can’t pull it off, well then, order pizza, open the wine, and light the candles. We have done things like that before, especially if we’ve just gotten home from a trip or if we’ve had a wedding in the afternoon. Recently after a late afternoon wedding, we picked up some things at the deli and used paper plates. That’s all we could muster! After we prayed, we put the kids at the table and the adults sat in the living room. It was very pleasant. Tomorrow I expect we will sit outside and enjoy the warm weather. Fire up the grill and take it easy. Don’t give up, and God will bless it!
When we first started celebrating the arrival of the Sabbath with a feast, our daughter Bekah was engaged to Ben Merkle. We had a new house, a new table, and Ben made our numbers swell to six. But soon we had a couple of college girls living with us, and that made eight, and Knox was born, but he didn’t take up much room. So for the ten years that Ben and Bekah have been married, they have been coming to our house every Saturday night for the festivities, and Knox now has four younger siblings and six cousins joining him around our table.
This past fall the Merkles moved to Oxford for Ben to pursue graduate studies. They have a great little place to stay that has been both a blessing and a challenge for continuing the Sabbath tradition. Their cottage has a small kitchen, no separate dining room, a living room that is smaller than my bedroom, but a very expansive yard for the kids to run in when the weather is nice. Since they had so much on their plate adjusting to new quarters, a new country, and home schooling the kids for the first time (since Logos is too far away for a commute), I encouraged Bekah not to feel like she had to keep up the same Sabbath traditions that we had. The last thing she needed was pressure from Mom in the form of, “So what did you do for Sabbath dinner this week?” But it wasn’t but a few weeks before she had tackled it anyway. Once you’ve gotten into the Continue reading ‘Sabbath at Oxford’
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