I stocked up on Halloween candy yesterday. Boy, is that stuff expensive! I stuffed an entire plastic bag and it cost me over thirty dollars.
I was worried- we live in this small, brick ranch neighborhood and we've seen flocks of children come out at twilight to play pick up basketball, so I suspect that crowds will come out on Halloween night.
I really don't want to run out of candy. I suspect egging is a real possibility around here.
Keith's last day of his mission is today. His gout has flared up, he has a cold and he's worn right down. His CO told him to take today off, but Keith insisted on limping in anyway.
He did consent to sleeping in, so I was able to feed him a nourishing breakfast of blueberry bagel sandwich with cream cheese, strawberry preserves, egg and cheddar cheese. This is his current breakfast favorite.
Let me tell you, there is nothing, nothing like rereading Isaiah to improve one's already great enjoyment of Handel's Messiah. And reading Isaiah while listening to said music? Whoa Nellie. That's a heck of a lot of Messianic prophesy right there.
However, taken as a whole, reading from Judges onward is much like reading the Silmarillian. Stories that should be entire books in themselves take up mere paragraphs. Nothing is explained properly. Everything starts out awesome and splendid, and then inexorably becomes worse with small pockets of relief which in the end get wiped out.
But it's fascinating and beautiful to see that even as the earthly kingdom was crumbling away and being carried off and generally falling into corruption and ruin, the prophets were full of visions and promises of a new kingdom. I love seeing glimpses of Jesus all through the Old Testament.
I read in a blog this morning about how mainstream modern Christian culture has such a tendency to focus on the immutability of God that they tend to forget His emotional nature and consequently, suppress their own emotions, feeling the need to be stoic under all circumstances.
I empathized with this, as I blogged about before. Reading the Old Testament over again has really opened my eyes. He is overflowing with emotion. There is hardly a moment or event that does not draw from His heart a deep upwelling of grief or sorrow or compassion or love or passionate longing or yearning pity or deeply burning anger that is slow to build and quickly expressed, and followed by healing and restoration.
Sometimes when I'm terrified (and that would be often), Christ reminds me that it's His righteousness that I'm wearing and there is no need to be afraid. And then I found this, which I thought was beautiful:
"I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels."
Isaiah 61:10
Once or twice I said to Him how glad I was not to have been born back then, under the old covenant. His response was immediate- He said, even then, you would have been Mine, even then, you would have been called by My Name and heard My voice.
Like, when you are His person, you are His person, you know? There is no getting away from His love. He will hunt you down (in the best way possible), He will heal you and He will love on you. He is irresistible.
"Even as [in His love] He chose us [actually picked us out for Himself as His own] in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy (consecrated and set apart for Him) and blameless in His sight, even above reproach, before Him in love.
For He foreordained us (destined us, planned in love for us) to be adopted (revealed) as His own children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the purpose of His will [because it pleased Him and was His kind intent]--
[So that we might be] to the praise and the commendation of His glorious grace (favor and mercy), which He so freely bestowed on us in the Beloved."
Ephesians 1:4-6
Today, I'm going to try and make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and then I'm going to try and not eat a lot of them. We'll see how that goes.
