Tasty Bites: Scalloped Potatoes and Strawberry Poppy Seed Salad

By Beth V

Whether you are hosting an Easter meal or taking a dish to share with family and friends, I hope you will try and enjoy these two recipes. The scalloped potatoes recipe comes from Julia Child. It amazes me how potatoes, butter, salt, pepper, shredded cheese and cream + time in the oven come together to create such amazing flavor and texture. The secret is low heat and slow cooking. These humble ingredients are magically transformed into something much greater than the sum of their parts.

The Strawberry Poppy Seed Salad is my favorite salad for spring. Spinach, thinly sliced red onion, sliced strawberries, crumbled feta cheese and toasted walnuts topped with a creamy poppy seed dressing - another example of simple flavors that come together in a unique and delicious way.

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One Word At A Time: Adventure

By Ginny (MAD21)

If I were to choose a few words to describe my family, one of them would surely be adventurous. We love to go on adventures. Yes, we have also chosen that word to describe an everyday occurrence in hopes that by changing a certain child's perspective about it might make them more motivated to participate, but really, we do love them. One of our most favorite ways to add adventure to a road trip is that we don't usually have a map or a time line.

We have two different kinds of trips we like to take. One has a specific location as our destination, the other is "just pick a direction."

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Who Is Smart?

By Pat

"Do not be wise in your own eyes, but fear the Lord and shun evil." (Proverbs 3:7)

I am not a very educated person, I admit, and I have often wished I had gone farther with my schooling. I feel easily intimidated when I am talking with someone I feel is smarter than me, but oddly, the older I get, the more I realize what true wisdom really is.

I may not know all the world capitals and the directions on how to get there, but I do know the greatest capital of all is Heaven, and God made the instructions for safe arrival very clear for all of us in the great map called the Bible. I doubt I could name all of our presidents and other country leaders, past or present, but I can tell you without hesitation that the ultimate leader, the unmatchable ruler, the final judge, is God. I need not know more than that. It's very unlikely that I could recite the rules contained in the Constitution and the various amendments, but I have memorized the Ten Commandments, and I try very hard to follow them. I know that the rules Jesus taught us are much simpler, way fewer, definitely harder to follow, but much more worth learning; to love, forgive, and to serve God tirelessly.

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Technical Issues

Just to let you all know, we've been having some technical issues with the blog for the last 36 hours. We are working on getting it resolved. If pages are not loading for you or if they are blank all together, please come back later and visit us again. I don't want you to miss the wonderful posts we have this week.

Thanks! Ginny

God is good!

God Is... In His Being

By Jason V

Infinite, Eternal and Unchangeable in His Being

Thinking About the Unimaginable: God's Self-Existence

My kids have a hard time with the whole "Who made God?" question.  We've been over and over it, but my oldest son, Andrew (age seven) is still wrestling with how it can be possible that no one made God.  The Bible does not explain or defend the self-existence of God.  It simple begins, "In the beginning, God..."  So, at the very beginning, when creation first began, God already was.  Of course He was, because He made everything.  How else would He be able to make everything if He did not already exist before everything else?

God is- absolutely!  Properly speaking, we cannot say that God exists.  We have to say that He self-exists.  Why?  Well, to further blow our minds, to "exist" literally means to emerge, to come out of, to appear, to come into being.  I exist.  I have appeared and have come into being.  God, however, always was and always will be.  He did not appear or come out of anything, so He does not exist.  He ALONE is self-existing, needing no cause and no origin.  He IS.  Isn't that what He told Moses in Exodus 3- "I AM"?

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