A picture of [dependence]

Since I began teaching, Sunday afternoons and evenings have become my food prep days.

The shopping game is so satisfying– plotting my daily menu, then fighting to drive my weekly grocery total lower and lower. This week was successful– forty cents beneath my lowest record, and an all-new all-real-food menu.

But even more satisfying than the shopping is the actual putting-together of the foodstuffs.

I love ripping open a new bag of frozen chicken breasts and mixing up the veggies and spices for the slow-cooker. Even now, the lemony-Tuscan-y fragrance is filling the kitchen and dining room. Before I go to bed I’ll tuck in the frozen boccoli to its new, soupy home. There are Pinterest-inspired whole wheat banana-raisin muffins sprinkled with sugar, and individual omelettes infused with Valentina hot sauce. On the stove is a now 2/3-full pot of fresh, fluffy rice which I’ve already begun to nibble at, sprinkled with salt, or with some soy sauce, or just steaming and pure.

On top of all this extravagance, richness unheard of to the huge groups of people who are living on less than $2 a day around the world, I also enjoy a scandalous, gloriously impossible gift:  Jesus saved me, adopted me into God’s family and kingdom, and continues to save me. There’s so much to be excited for and explain that I can’t possibly put it all into words tonight… but I’m excited to try for the rest of my life.

Here’s a first attempt… perhaps I can knock at 1,000 words at least with this image and its linked sermon:

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/conference-messages/why-we-all-need-the-gospel

“Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you” (Psalm 37:5).
Francis Chan @ Bethlehem Baptist 2011
http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/conference-messages/why-we-all-need-the-gospel