Author: Wick

Husband, Father, Pastor, Missionary, Writer, Poet, Friend, reader, coffee enthusiast, hockey Wing-Nut, musical participator, etc...
Posted in Different Moments

scone on?

Posted on by Wick

Toward the end of my book, I talk about us being made in the image of a very creative God.  Along those lines, once in a while I’ll share something I’ve created recently.  Usually that will involve words.  On occasion, however, it will involve flour. 🙂

I stole the basic recipe for these “White Chocolate Raspberry Scones” from the “Joy of Baking – Chocolate Chip Scone” recipe.

Here’s what happened:

My girls were awake and energized, and we were low on milk.  I knew cereal would be a stretch, and our oldest has grown fond of “baking with mommy” recently, thanks to a baking set from Santa.  I also confess – I love scones.  What better way to eat cookies for breakfast, than to hide it under a different name? 🙂

So I googled for recipes.  So far, my scone’s had turned out a bit too fluffy/dry.  So I added the word “dense” to the search.  Bingo.  Chocolate chip scones.  I went to the cupboard to start getting ingredients out, and no chocolate chips.  Dang.  But I didn’t give up.  We had a bunch of white chocolate raspberry “hugs” my wife had gotten for cheap recently, and I had a ziplock baggy and a hammer.  The girls loved helping daddy unwrap and smash these into a half cup of scone recipe gold. 🙂

Unfortunately, we also didn’t have unsalted butter or buttermilk.  But I’ve paid attention to my wife here and there.  I simply didn’t add salt, and used salted butter.  I even made my own buttermilk with a cup of milk and a bit of white vinegar.  Boom.  We were ready.

Followed the recipe linked above, with the changes I’ve listed here, and didn’t add any dried cherries or cranberries.  To be fair, I did get dried cranberries out, but didn’t want to start a berry war within the scone flavors.  Also, scone recipes usually say to “fold in the butter”using a pastry blender of some sort.  Buncha baking snobs, if you ask me.  Just grab a potato masher, and go to town until it’s course crumbs.

Addie loved helping me “paint” each scone with milk and sprinkle sugar on it before putting it in the oven.  15 minutes later, and we were glad God was so creative. 🙂

Posted in Different Thoughts, Uncategorized

hairy humility…

Posted on by Wick

We both knew God wanted her to go.  It would be a big step for her personally, but also meant connecting the story of our family with a larger story of God’s love for His children.  Planting seeds for family involvement in something larger than our household that will continue as our children grow.

We were in the midst of trying to sell our house, and our 3 daughters were all 4 and under.  But we knew it was important for my wife to travel with our church missions team to the Philippines last March.  One thing I’ve loved about my wife ever since we first met – was her heart for the quietly overlooked.  When my first response might be to stand on a soapbox and yell for a group call to action, her first response is to kneel down, and be the loving presence needed herself.  I continue to learn from her example. 🙂

Surprisingly, however, the thought of my wife leaving for a couple weeks didn’t thrill me a ton in some ways.  Thankfully, my parents could come down and help for a week.  I could survive, even though the distance and time difference and safety of my better half would keep me from sleeping much at all that week.  I felt as if I was on a “holy mission” of fatherhood and husbandry.  By keeping our kids healthy (or at least fed) and being ready to show the house to a prospective buyer in a moments notice – I was serving God.

So what was one of the big things that got to me?  The place where I felt the most inadequate and unable to provide what my little angels needed?  You probably already guessed it – their hair.  Beyond washing it, and combing it out – I still have no clue what I’m doing.  And my kids know too.  A month ago, I gave Barbie a lop-sided pony-tail, and my oldest daughter’s eye’s became wide with pride as she yelled, “Daddy, you did it!”, and then to the general audience of our home – “Daddy can do a pony tail!!!”

Nope.  I still can’t.  Heck, I feel like I’m torturing them enough just trying to remove the evil little rubber bands every once in a while to wash their hair.

Sure, I need my wife for amazingly huge things.  Things that are so obvious, we said them to each other in the vows we took.  But the simple, overlooked, quiet needs end up being pretty important sometimes too.

We need God for some pretty huge reasons.  Reasons so obvious, we teach them in Sunday School.  They’re praught (past tense of “preach”) about on a weekly basis.  Books are written on them.  But to each of us, there is something unique and humblingly small…that reveals just how intricately we’ve been wired/created to exist with our creator.  A need we have that is beautifully our own.  And He is more than able to meet that need even now, if we’ll slow down…and draw near…

Philippians 4:19 “And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

Posted in Different Books, Uncategorized

raising earthen vessels…

Posted on by Wick

I recently finished reading “Earthen Vessels – Why our bodies matter to our faith” by Matthew Lee Anderson.  If you ask me the question “Should I read it?”, I would answer “yes”.  There is a lot of great stuff, and reminders that the evangelical view/value of the physical body has been shaded by over-emphasizing the unhealthy goal of escaping the physical world.  But being honest, I found myself skipping a page here and there when I felt like there was a dead horse in the book.  (dead horse warning = chapters 6, 7 and 8)

But overall, it’s a great reminder to us as parents especially.  We are not simply given the task of raising souls who will one day escape these mortal shells, shedding them for the true way God has designed our children to exist.  We are raising embodied beings, and our care for them extends into every dimension of their existence.

Even in the dead horse sections, Anderson does a great deal of explaining/studying what the changes in our “norms” approaching topics like tattoos, pleasure, and homosexuality as the evangelical church, means to the greater changes in our view/perception of these physical bodies.  It’s interesting stuff at times, and even as someone who has a tattoo, I found myself nodding in agreement to some of what he pointed out.

He speaks truth, as in the chapter on sexuality saying, “The loud arguments within evangelicalism that pleasure is good border on defensively shouting, ‘Hey, we’ve got pleasure too!’ in a world that cares about little else.”

I’m not gonna hop on the “100% healthy, vegan, natural, organic, baby boot camp, all-star child athlete” band-wagon anytime soon, by any means.  But this book is a great reminder that the God of ALL creation, old and NEW, chose to connect with His creation on an intimately physical level.  He became flesh.  He chose to make his dwelling among us.  He calls our bodies a temple of His Holy Spirit.  When we were first created, he held us close with love, and literally breathed His own life into our physical presence.

We cannot faithfully respond to all of this simply by “inviting Jesus into our hearts”, and relating to Christ with our brains and emotions.  We are called as embodied beings to be transformed in every way imaginable, to the patterns, habits, and life-choices of someone made New in Christ.  May God be with us as we seek to lead our children and homes in such experiences of a life centered on Jesus.

Anderson gives great credit to the beauty and goodness of our whole beings, while still declaring the truth found in scripture that we often forget.  God gives us insight into what is to come after this life, and it’s not floating around on clouds or becoming glowing orbs that exist forever among the stars.  We look forward to a very real, and physical resurrected existence, much like we see in the resurrected Christ.  As he quotes C.S. Lewis,

“If flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom, that is not because they are too solid, too gross, too distinct, too ‘illustrious with being.’  They are too flimsy, too transitory, too phantasmal.”  The solidity and permanence of the bodily resurrection is too strong for the frailties and contingencies of our current bodies.” – Earthen Vessels, page 168