Farewell to Winter

Two days ago an 8 inch blanket of snow hugged the ground and clung to every twig.  Now the evening air soars to 52 degrees and drives away the last rags of winter's splendor. A tide all crimson and peach and slate and sapphire glows and fades away from the sinking sun.  The birds are singing their welcome song thrillingly, wildly, ardently and whistling to the velvet night in the key of spring. There are drops (drops!) pattering on the softening sod, running down the eaves and tapping the gutters in a mellow sweet rain while distant thunder murmurs and nearer grumbles like the voice of an old friend we have waited to hear a long while.  In spring God makes the world new.

"What did Spring-time whisper?
O, ye rivulets, waking from your trance so sad,
Pleased to welcome fisher-lad
With his little nets,
Speed, for summer's in the air,
Prattle for the breeze is warm,
Chatter by the otter's lair,
Bubble past the ivied farm;
Wake the primrose on the banks
Bid the violet ope' her eyes
Hurry in a flood of thanks underneath serener skies!
What a revel's coming soon..."
~ Norman Gale

The Fear of God in a Peach

Sunshine warming the floor and steam coming off the canner in billows, hair frizzed in the humid heat until it made to fly right out the window, sticky-sweet hands and the rich ripe perfume of peaches.  All of it so very sundry.

There is a danger in words...this strange power to almost thoughtlessly make poetic what is plain or trivialize what is transcendent.   The composer can do this too...write epic music without a real epic.  But there is more to the art of creativity than this, because there are real epics and real poems.  Sorting bright round peaches into jars can sort your brain.  They call tasks like these mindless...but I found that here, at least as much as at any other time, there is no room for mindlessness.  The Spirit has a way of using menial tasks that get your hands dirty to compel you to face the greater issues of life.  And when He presses we can face them without fear like Sarah or bend to the temptations of self-imposed martyrdom like Eve.  The daughters of men are especially susceptible to the latter temptation, I believe, so I had the great audacity to wish for a good conclusion on the matter that pressed while I steamed in the kitchen along with rosy golden fruit.  

What is the source of meaning and joy in a hot messy kitchen?  I knew that the knowledge of God is all the difference.  Taking thoughts captive grows into a habit of the mind and heart, a constant counterpoint to all the little melodies and great harmonies in life.  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, His word says.  So ... the fear of the Lord is the hunger to know Him in everything, the insatiable desire to have the mind of Christ.  There is a greater power in this than in glorifying the trivial merely because poetry and music are tools that enable you to do it.  To some it is given to know the fear of the Lord among kings, to others, to know it among blades of grass.  Trivial, in fact, are all the issues of men, kings and grass alike are but small things.  Yet, wonder of wonders, neither are small issues in light of the kingdom of God.

Some take this merely as comfort.  But I was looking for more than comfort.  I didn't really need comfort, after all.  Comfort is the knowledge that one is spared the curse of death through the power of Christ's gospel.  Purpose is the working of that gospel into ever fiber of one's being like kneading leaven in a lump of dough.  There it was again, the mundane kneading of bread dough threads it's humble fibers through the master plan of the cosmos.  How does He do that?  How do the things that are small become great?  The knowledge of God again.  All at once I was overwhelmed by a sense of privilege...and shame.  What am I, mere dust of the earth, that He should stoop to give me pleasure in the greatness of the little threads of his plan.  Who am I to revel in the glory of a peach?

Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter of Jerusalem!
The LORD has taken away the judgments against you;
he has cleared away your enemies.
The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst;
you shall never again fear evil.
On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
“Fear not, O Zion;
let not your hands grow weak.
The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.

Zephaniah must have been wondering at it too, when his heart overflowed with the poetry of God's faithfulness. The comfort of salvation we love...but there is the wonder too..."let not your hands grow weak..."? He knows our weakness...our tendency to fear everything but Him, to forget the glory behind the song.

Is the Lord God in your midst...while you can peaches?  Yes!  Mighty to save calloused hearts as well as hands and give joy to long days on your feet and pour quiet into your hurried tasks and exultation into your solitary work.  The unseen is beautiful in its own right...because it is seen by Him. Is this about as cliche as it gets?  Here my brain was sorting backwards.  I don't suppose most who use that "cliche" even know what it means.  The fact is, I don't presume to suppose that anything needs to be seen apart from the fact that He sees it.

There are serendipities every day in our lives that God makes to touch the eternal right before our eyes.  And here I was, a very small thing that He should notice.  He stoops to give us joy in the flavor of a ripe peach.  He bends His greatness low to carry my heart out the window on the sound of a violin.  Of course I knew David was right to wonder that the Creator of the Universe is mindful of us, but everyday wonders are used by the Spirit to teach us more and more how much of a wonder it is.

I was a little girl the first time I saw the Teton Mountains.  We were driving towards them across the vast western plains when Daddy pointed out their distant peaks and the car was filled with little gasps of excitement: "Mountains!"  There was wonder then...true wonder.  But I felt like I was growing up just watching those mountains get closer.  I had never seen anything that big before.  They became higher and more terribly beautiful with every mile, until, when we finally started climbing the foothills, I could no longer see the tops.  My little-girl gasp at the first glance was forgotten in absolute awe.  The truth is, I hadn't even known what awe was when I first looked.

I was climbing those mountains of awe over the peach peelings those few short days ago.  At first I thought to myself that you couldn't expect to go can peaches and have an epiphany every day.  That would be another cliche, right?  But again I wondered, why not?  Every day, the Spirit of the Living God is living in us.  And while we walk about and classify every act as "normal" or mundane, He is working His perfect and awesome will.

So...Its not every day I climb spiritual mountains over the canner, but as the Lord enables, I will.  And all the while, I'll turn, again and again, in His merciful kindness and at His continual prompting to live in the light of the kingdom...where even a peach is epic.  This is the fear of God all the day long...the perpetual awareness of His presence.  The ever-turning of our hearts to Him...the seeking of His face continually.  A few will know what I mean when I say that "I am just stating the facts."  The more whimsical and intangible one's thoughts are, the more matter of fact one needs to be, as I am daily proving.  So here I have perhaps even trivialized the matter with my words... so that I will not forget and complain.

"...but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”

Jeremiah 9:24

A Burma Expedition, Missionaries, and Elephants...

Our house is full of talk and planning for an exciting new opportunity our brothers have to work for Christ’s kingdom!  We are all up to our ears in books about Burma and Buddhism and elephants and the transformation of culture through the gospel.  The following is a letter Charlie and Ben are sharing with friends and family about their mission:

Charlie and I (Benjamin) trust this finds you well.  We want to let you know about an exciting opportunity we have this summer.  Last July, we attended a Hazardous Journey Boot camp in the mountains of Colorado, training for strenuous and enterprising expeditions to advance the gospel.

This year, the Hazardous Journeys Society is launching a ten-year mission, sending teams of men to each of the 190+ countries in the world in order to proclaim the glory of God through exploration and discovery. Our team leader, Kurtis Amundson, has been commissioned by the Hazardous Journeys Society to undertake an expedition to Burma this July.

For centuries, the orient has been a place of fascination for Christian explorers, adventurers, and missionaries.  In 1277, as an emissary to the Yuan Dynasty, the Christian explorer Marco Polo traveled to the kingdom of Mien—what today is Burma, or Myanmar. He described its capitol as a “gilded city alive with tinkling bells and the swishing sounds of monks’ robes.” The 19th Century saw British rule in the orient expand westward from India making formerly unnavigable foreign lands available as mission fields for Christian evangelism. In this newly discovered land,  Adoniram Judson arrived on July 13, 1813, and was ‘devoted for life’ to the spreading of the Gospel.

As our team returns to Burma on the 200th anniversary of Judson’s arrival, we will examine the legacy of exploration and evangelism in this land by focusing on his ministry, influence, and the impact of the gospel on the Burmese culture.  We hope to inspire others by reviving Judson’s legacy and proclaiming the culture-transforming power of the gospel.

In addition to chronicling the Christian influence in Burma, we want to present a proper and Biblical understanding of Buddhism.  Buddhism is practiced by 89% of the Burmese population. Burma is a nation steeped in idolatry. With thousands of pagodas, stupas, and statues scattered over the landscape, the nation is recognized as the most religious Buddhist country in the world in terms of the proportion of monks in the population and proportion of income spent on religion. Our team will seek to examine the comprehensive effect that Buddhism has on the Burmese culture, investigating how every realm of influence—familial, ecclesiastical, civil, and personal—is affected by their pagan and idolatrous worldview.

As a team, we will live in simple bamboo houses, and travel to the ruins of the ancient capital city of Bagan. We will travel throughout Burma and step foot into the Buddhist culture, learning first-hand the influences of the Buddhist religion on every sphere of life. We will listen to the monks speak of the Buddhist culture, see the Buddhist marble bible, and visit the garishly exorbitant Schwadegon Pagoda.  We will speak with the great-grandchildren of men and women who witnessed the transforming power of the gospel in the nation and we will interview local church leaders, some of them former Buddhist monks, to hear first-hand accounts of Judson’s legacy. Our purpose is to create a record for posterity of the providences of God in the land of Burma; to tell a story for our children and their children in a way it has never been told before.

At the conclusion of the expedition, the team will produce resources compiling the results of their work for the Christian community.  There is a cost to proclaiming the truth — the cost of criticism and the sacrifice of time and resources spent to research, formulate, and present the power of the gospel coherently. In recognition of the momentous nature of the task we have undertaken, we would welcome your financial support.

The Hazardous Journeys Society is a project of Vision Forum Ministries, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization so all gifts are tax-deductible. Donations can be made through the Vision Forum Ministries website for our Burma Expeditions by follow the link below.

Thank you for your support of this project.

Benjamin and Charlie Lenz

Support the Expedition

• Click on the “Support the Expedition” button below

• Select the "Hazardous Journeys" fund on the donation page

• In the notes field be sure to mention the "Expedition to Burma"

• Make your donation of any amount

Sign Up for Email Updates at expeditiontoburma.com

Follow Us on Facebook  ─  Hazardous Journeys Society

Copyright ©2013 Expedition to Burma, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:

Expedition to Burma

4719 Blanco Road

San Antonio, TX 78212

The Tuesday Kitchen

The Tuesday kitchen has been woefully neglected on the blog, but nobody is famishing here at home in the meantime...for the most part.  :)  This Tuesday we added some guests to the gathering around the table and to the hearty dinner we prepared together I added this finale of homemade chocolate pudding with another fantastic recipe from Mel's Kitchen Cafe!

The more the merrier!

What beats rich chocolate and light fluffy whipped cream?

The Tuesday Kitchen

What do you do when you forgot to think about dinner until after noon?  This tuesday I pulled a couple of pounds of venison stew meat out of the freezer after lunch, "quick-thawed" them in cool water for a couple of hours and made a stew that was ready to eat by 6:30.  Garlic, onions, oregano, thyme, turmeric and salt and pepper dressed it up and potatoes and carrots in hearty amounts served to stuff the corners of some hungry stomachs!

Mama made her big batch of excellent baked beans and froze nine pounds of them as well.  They seasoned the house with their sweet savory fragrance all night!

Chocolate Cake: The Final Verdict

 A few months ago, in anticipation of Ben's party, we set out to find a quintessential chocolate cake recipe. For years, we have been less than satisfied with two recipes, one simple, dry and dull and the other requiring an everlastingly long series of details for a fairly fluffy, deep chocolate, relatively moist cake.
The weekend before last, the Lenz ladies from different generations (you know who you are!) gathered around a table and savored two cakes contemplating between exquisite mouthfuls what is "quintessential" Chocolate Cake. What is the shape of the crumb? Is it small and dense or large and moist? Is chocolate supposed to be sweet or a little bitter. What is the effect of vinegar as a leavening vs. eggs?

In the end most of the ladies concluded Whacky Cake is quintessential cake but The Best Chocolate Cake was the best cake they had ever tasted. :o) If I seem to slight the gentlemen's opinion on the subject, they must acknowledge comments such as, "I like this plate because it has the larger piece" were hardly scientific.  Our reticence in regard to their opinions cannot be taken as a reflection of our estimation of their critique of food in general. :o)

To continue with our review, Whacky Cake was popular during WWII and because of it's wonderful moist texture and light sweetness it was often served with milk for breakfast! It has no eggs and is leavened with vinegar. We'll keep this one in our repertoire because it is incredibly easy to make. Often called "Cake Pan Cake", it can literally be mixed in the cake pan with a fork in a matter of minutes and is simply delicious.
On the other hand, The Best Chocolate Cake is distinctly "desert", according to our connoisseurs.  Still easy to construct, it is rich and moist, with a tastefully intense chocolate flavor and a large light crumb.
If you are bored with cake crumb, pardon the interruption from dinner reports; we'll continue with our regular broadcast next week. :o)
But not before addressing the frosting! Honestly, it was hard to properly analyze a cake covered with the most sumptuous creme you have ever tasted a half inch thick. The fact that Miracle Frosting originated in the South may have something to do with our favoring it, but not any more than its flour based thickening allowing for 1/3 of the sugar content usually required to thicken frosting. Be sure to follow the links next time you require a chocolate cake and benefit from our gracious panel of tasters!

The Tuesday Kitchen (A week late)

In spite of the fact that my blogging end of the new endeavor is...less than consistent, the actual meal-makeing is advancing rapidly towards the habitual stage, albeit not yet with the degree of excellence I aspire to.

Last week's family time around the table was augmented on Tuesday night with family friends.

Lessons learned? Lessons I heard before, but was obliged to learn the hard way nevertheless.  Don't get me wrong; the company was of the best kind and the fellowship blessed, and that makes all the difference.





I simply didn't maintain the stress-free environment I could wish to.  In this case, more preparation time was required...as we learned from Chef Francis Foucachon at the Food Conference.

The food itself, I am told, left little wanting.  This was largely due to the fact that I "cheated" by having Daddy do the grilling (another genius suggestion from Chef Foucachon), and of course everyone else helping get the other food on the table.
The finished product?










Grilled Caprese Chicken with Salad (again the lime cilantro dressing served us well) and Zucchini "hotdish" and green beens again as sides (they are in season!).

Our homemade whole wheat bread rounded off the meal and Blueberry Fool (which was consumed so promptly that it escaped the camera) sweetened our palates as dessert.  I made a double recipe and decided that I will make more of the cream mixture and less blueberry next time.

From the Lenz Family Kitchen...

Our family is glad to be home after a week-long trip to San Antonio, Texas for Vision Forum's Reformation of Food and Family Conference.  The event was wonderful on so many levels, and I think all the Lenz's came home stuffed with "food for thought."  One of my intentions following the lessons learned there is to post weekly food creations I contribute to the family diet.  The primary purpose will be to keep a record of successes, failures, discoveries and old favorites.

Many friends and customers have asked our family to explain the method we have for maintaining a healthy diet.  In some ways, we are not the best people to ask because we are spoiled.

Living on a farm means the fresh clean ingredients for any meal are literally at our fingertips.  Watching families we know source good food from multiple local farmers while we grow it a short walk from the back door has often forced me to question whether I would be as diligent and consistent about my food sources if I didn't live on a farm run on principles of health and land stewardship.

Ultimately, I believe an attitude of gratefulness for whatever God chooses to give us for food is essential.  At the same time, being purposeful about the food we eat is, as I am learning, an act of obedience and worship to our Creator and should not be taken lightly.

Our method?  The inspiration for most meals comes from whatever is in the garden and freezer.  Meal planning is established around a few seasonal ingredients on a daily or weekly basis.

This week we had cabbage and we were tired of cole slaw.  So I made big salads.  A Six Arrows Farm chicken went into the crock pot Tuesday morning and Daddy brought home a few ingredients we don't grow, like a lime and an avocado.

I tried a new dressing...Creamy BBQ Cilantro Lime from Mel's Kitchen Cafe, a recipe site we love.

Next time I will be adding more lime a bit more pepper than the recipe calls for and cayenne pepper (something we were out of at the time.)  It was very good, even so, and we don't have any leftovers!

An excellent piece of advice from Chef Francis Foucachon at the conference concerning cooking was to be prepared ahead of time for a meal.  This meal was not even planned until noon of the same day.  My "excuse" for being less than prepared was the fact that we arrived home from the Food Conference about 1:30 Tuesday morning.  Things missing, in retrospect, were a little red onion and black beans (I had them and forgot until we were past the first few bites.)  :)

After clean up Tuesday night, I mixed up a batch of a family favorite, baked oatmeal, to have for breakfast Wednesday morning.  I love the recipe because of the make-ahead style.  Because I put it together the night before, I can stumble into the kitchen half-awake and turn the oven on and breakfast is ready about fifty minutes later.  Ingredients in baked oatmeal are also inspired by whatever we have in the house.  Some favorite additions are coconut, raisins, apples, walnuts or almonds, and dried dates.  This time we ate it with delicious Apricot syrup Aubrey canned last fall.

Amiability...

"I make up my mind to be very good an amiable, and the next minute let anyone, big or little, child or servant say any thing crass or disagreeable, and my spirits ooze out, until my only safety lies in flight, and if I want to regain my equanimity of temper I have to run away and sing Dixie, or Keep your Ark a-moving, before I make another sortie...
"...considering how much the happiness of those around us depends on our loving words, and kind feelings towards them, how whole days may be made miserable by one cross word or thoughtless deed, how a dozen merry faces can be clouded by one ill tempered or anger one - considering how we are responsible to God for every evil influence which may cause other to sin, cultivate amiability, Sarah, as you would the rarest talent bestowed on you prize it above all things...
"If ill humor must have a vent, make faces at your looking glass; but when you enter the family circle, do as our dear father did; throw all care and annoyance to the winds, have a pleasant word for all, for you enter the Holy of Holies - Home - the least and lowest can add a new pleasure, or a new disturbance, the duty of contributing to the common happiness is encumbent on all. Let the home circle be the place for the exchange of pleasant thoughts, let all disagreeable ones be put away.  Ours was a happy home; father’s example should influence his children.  O Sarah my dear! if you are ever inflicted with a large and interesting family - which Kind Heaven forbid! - teach them to cultivate amiability as the only safeguard of happiness.  Teach it, preach it, incessantly.  Yes! and by the time my “interesting family” is brought up in the way it should go, I will not have the amiability enough myself to make a respectable appearance! So much for theory without practice!"
~Sarah Morgan - from The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman

"I feel like we are a Bakery!"...

...One of the Lenz ladies sometime in the week before Christmas

The Lenz Family Bakery and Restaurant has been busy the last few weeks. Although they are not all pictured, this is a list of the goods we made on the bakery end.

Candy Cane Cookies

 

Spritz Cookies

 

Russian Tea Cakes

Old-Fashioned Date Cookies (Great-Grandma's Recipe and Mama's favorite)

Star Cookies (Daddy's favorite)

Gingerbread Cookies

"Face" Cookies

Butterscotch Bars

Traditional Swedish Saffron Rolls (Great-Grandma's Recipe and Everyone's favorite!)

Click here to read more about making these!

Swedish Cardamom Braid

Truffles

Fudge