A thought from Jan 7

"I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God." -Romans 12:1

I've been really struck by a reading I encountered a few days ago. Here's what the rest of the devotional had to say about this verse:

"To be liberated in Christ, we've got some sacrifices to make. And as long as He is the one asking us for them -  not our own guilt or legalistic tendencies- any sacrifice we make in our quest for freedom will be wholly consumed by God as a sweet sacrifice. He will bless it.


"We fear making sacrifices. But the irony is that we also make a lot of sacrifices when we are not living in the will of God. How many things have we placed on the alter to Satan's kingdom? Don't we live sacrificially when we're outside the will of God, giving up all sorts of things that were meant to be ours in Christ?"

From Beth Moore's book Breaking Free Day By Day . I love the devotional because each day's entry is short, to be honest with you. That is helping me to make a habit out of it. But since it's short, I usually run through yesterday's and then read today's twice over. Long reads in and of themselves aren't the problem, but sometimes I just can't be bothered- as if that actually makes any sense! In any case, so far I've only been really truly struck by one or two readings but I'm enjoying it and getting at least a dose of scripture, in case I dont get to my Bible later that day (which I also have been doing; I've never been good with consistent reading like that). The one posted above is self-explanatory and poignant, and general in that I don't feel like I need to explain how it fits in my life as it fits everywhere (or most places), probably, in all of our lives.

I am heading into the Verizon building today to take some sort of computer-based assessment. These sorts of things are never challenging for me and so I find myself not thinking much about it. Hopefully this test is no different. Dave also has a phone interview with them in about 25 minutes- I hope that goes very well for him because if he wants the job and gets it, and I get it as well (or something else) we will be doing just fine for ourselves in our little lakeside existence up here.

Yesterday we went ice skating! We donned our $7 thrift store ice skates and hit the lake. It was his first time ice skating, and though he started off by using some sort of skateboarding motion (only propelling himself forward using one foot like you would with a skateboard) he eventually got the hang of it. I grew up sliding around on ponds but never really got the hang of skating- it has been years and I have traveled to many rinks and ponds with friends only to sit out and watch as opposed to rent skates and flail about on the glassy surface. Gliding around was a surprisingly sublime experience for me yesterday, however. There are drifty patches of snow checkering the ice but even including these the lake is largely very smooth right now and there was no wind. It was nearly effortless for me to make it from the house out to the island and back (and lest I make it sound like I looked like a figure skater, let me assure you that I can't stop myself correctly and have great difficulty turning with any semblance of grace). The constant booming of the ice shifting was .. well, constantly disconcerting, but I've seen 4-wheelers out lately and so I tell myself that we should be ok. It is a very nice view once you get offshore a bit- to look and see a distant dot-figure with a hockey stick flying around on the other side of the lake, and a huddle of ice fishers farther down the shore. All that flat, open space. Dave's feet hurt afterwards but I believe that he had a great time as well :) We'll visit the other side of the lake over the next few days.

Haha.. hope you enjoyed those graceful and not-awkward-at-all photos.

And now I think it's time for a quick update...

woooowwwwwie! Check out that one stalk! I dont know why that one is shooting up so much faster than the others- they were all initially cut to the same length. As you can see, it did a lot of growing yesterday. Clearly, my measurements are subjective and I can only really keep consistent track of one stalk as they're all growing differently. Also clearly, there's an overachiever in the bunch. Anyhow, I'm having a lot of fun keeping track of my green onions. To give you a sense of how tall that big guy is, I'd say it's currently 4-5 inches high. We made stirfry last night (with a delicious orange sesame dressing/marinade by Drew's ... I'd highly recommend it) and are now down to the last little bit of the original onions, so... grow babies, grow!


And now I'm off to get ready for my meeting with Verizon. I can hear Dave on the phone downstairs, so that's in motion as well. Onwards into the windy, overcast day I go..