Kingdom Dining

One of Abbey's photos from our community dinner

I had originally title this post "Dinner With Friends" and intended to share it several days ago, but as He sometimes does, the Holy Spirit prompted me to delay so He could solidity the lesson even more.

As I've previously mentioned, every Saturday in a Mission Year, the team hangs out in their neighborhood and builds community with their neighbors. They also invite their neighbors and friends to have dinner with them. The menu during my visit was Lindi's delicious Tomato Basil Soup and Brent made some tasty oven-grilled cheese sandwiches. I pitched in a big salad purchased at the local NuWaters Co-op which is making healthy, local grown options available in a neighborhood where fresh produce is hard to come by.

Seated around the table were 15 people, most of whom only met within the previous day or two and even the Eight at the core of the group have only been together since early September...but it felt like home.

There were soon-to-be college kids, mastered-degreed young adults, empty-nester moms, friends from former church connections, a neighbor and me. Some are married, some divorced, and some remarried or single. We're not only all from different backgrounds and have varying skin tones, but the geographical backdrops didn't go unnoticed by me. Upstate New York, Kansas, Indiana, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas and my own Kentucky home were all represented around the three tables squished together to seat all 15 of us.

And as I tried to remember to see through Kingdom eyes, I heard that Whisper say, "I'm giving you just a glimpse of the Banquet I'm preparing for all of you." I don't know if I've ever experienced the Lord's Table before that night, and I did fleetingly think of asking them if we could have communion together. I wish I'd spoken up, because I know I felt the perfection of the moment when Jesus Himself was sitting there with us.

What was the reason for delaying this post? Well, apparently the Holy Spirit prompted the same observation in my daughter. She wrote about it in her February newsletter. 

Oh...but God is so good that He gave me even one more example.

Serving dinner at ESNKY in January

Our church partners with Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky to provide life-saving overnight housing for 12 men when temperatures drop below 15 degrees and their shelter is overflowing with people seeking aid. They are supposed to house 40, but Monday night when temperatures were below zero, we housed 12, Mother of God church (also a temporary overflow site) had 12 and ESNKY housed 90 souls. [We fed the 12 men at our place and about 70 at ESNKY.] One of our volunteers stepped on a man's hand trying to walk through the hallway because bodies lined both sides of the already narrow space. Whoever says, "I don't see the homeless, so the problem must not be that bad," needs to take a trip down to Scott Street on a single-digit night and observe the line down the block, just to get in the door.

Part of our Homeless Hosting set-up in January

My friend heads up our church's team of over 100 volunteers that share responsibility for hosting, feeding, driving and providing hospitality to these 12 men. So far this winter, we've done this five different weeks for either three or four nights each session. I love being part of the Church that truly is serving "the least of these" and who honestly believes we are called to "be the hands and feet of Jesus". Since this morning may be the last opportunity we have to love on our new friends at our place, my friend Kari sent out some final observations Holy Spirit has been laying on her heart. One that struck a chord with me is that she felt dining with our homeless friends gave her "a glimpse into what fellowship around God's table will be like in heaven someday."

Many races, varying socio-economic statuses, many different backgrounds, many different life choices...but all brought together by the bond of Christ's Love and an abundant feast He sets before us. That is a meal worthy of our attention.

All of this has made me crave more opportunities for Kingdom dining. The invitation is always there...but will we accept our seat He's reserved just for us?

Amen!

I Am a Prodigal

When I was in Houston two weeks ago, I had a wonderful opportunity to attend church at St. John's Downtown. Pastor Steven taught from Luke 15:11-32. Most Christians know this as the story Jesus told (aka parable) called The Prodigal Son.

"I am the Prodigal Son every time I look for unconditional love where it cannot be found." That quote from Pastor Steven is something I have repeatedly returned to since I wrote it down. He asked the congregation if as sons and daughters of the King, we ever "cash in" our royalty for debauchery.

Good thoughts to ponder.

I liked what I saw and heard at St. John's. Their emphasis on loving people where they are has led them into extensive homeless ministry, AIDS activism, baptismal commitments where vows to fight injustice in ourselves and others are expected and depression/bi-polar support groups that would be taboo in some churches are promoted from the pulpit. All of this while encouraging youth to pursue academics, not athletics, as the way to escape from poverty, by providing college campus tours throughout the South.

But as I have contemplated Pastor Steven's words, perfectly timed today I read in The Joy of the Gospel, "At times we (the Church) have to be like the father of the prodigal son, who always keeps his door open so that when the son returns, he can readily pass through it...Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse, it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems."

As I struggled last Sunday with being judgmental and critical of many incongruities that I see in American Christians, I was ever so grateful that my Father was waiting with the door wide open. Why would I as His Prodigal Child ever close it for anyone else?

The Hobbit Cafe'- Houston, Texas

On my trip to Houston to visit Abbey, the one place she'd mentioned that I really wanted to try was Hobbit Cafe'. It was just as fun and delicious as I'd hope it would be. 

Started in 1972, these are people dedicated to the Tolkien stories, not the presently popular movie versions. Their food, while mostly named for characters and places with which I'm familiar in the stories, still had us pulling out Abbey's iPhone to Google Valinor and a few other terms with which were weren't familiar in Hobbit-lore. That's how fun this place is.

Indoors, you're surrounded by a hefty collection of memorabilia and outside, you sit in the beer garden underneath the Party Tree. It was a beautiful day, so we sat outside. For a Kentuckian in February, just sitting outside for lunch made the entire experience delightful.

I had a delicious salmon burger (with no fun Hobbit name for it) and Abbey had a tasty portobello burger sans bun topped with jalapenos and alfalfa sprouts.  Our server was kind, prompt, attentive and helpful with suggestions. 

If I'm ever lucky enough to visit Houston again, I would definitely head back there for lunch or dinner. They have Sunday brunch items too. If you're in the area, check them out.

Texas Sheet Cake -Revamped (Vegan; low Gluten; lower Sugar)

Yesterday for Dale's birthday, I converted a Betty Crocker Texas Sheet Cake recipe and I thought I'd share it with you. This is one of my all-time favorites cakes and although I still wouldn't call it "healthy", it was definitely a step in the right direction. This wouldn't be something I'd make regularly because of the sugar and gluten factors, but for a special occasion, it was pretty tasty. When you see the amounts of sugar, you'll understand what I mean and believe it or not, this Betty Crocker version was the lowest in sugar I could find. That does give the icing more of a glaze texture instead of the traditional fudge-like icing of most Texas Sheet Cakes. Hope you enjoy it. We did (and still are!)!

Texas Sheet Cake (vegan; lower gluten and lower sugar):

• 2 cups spelt flour (I used 1 cup gluten free blend to lower gluten even more)
• 1 cup Sucanat (*see note below)
• 1 cup organic evaporated cane juice crystals
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1 cup coconut oil
• 1 cup water
• 3 Tablespoons baking cocoa
• 1/2 cup almond or coconut butter"milk" (**see note below)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 flaxseed "eggs"

Frosting

• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 3 Tablespoons baking cocoa
• 6 Tablespoons almond or coconut milk
• 1 cup coconut sugar (***see note below)
• 1 1/2 cup organic powdered sugar 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

For the cake: Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 15 x 10 x 1 pan and set aside. Stir flour, sugars and salt together in a mixing bowl and set aside. In a 2 quart saucepan, heat coconut oil, water and cocoa together just until boiling. Remove from heat. Pour oil/water/cocoa into mixing bowl with flour mixture and stir until well mixed. Add butter"milk", baking soda, vanilla and eggs to mixing bowl and stir until well blended. Pour into prepared pan. Bake 22-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

For the frosting: While cake is baking, heat coconut oil, cocoa, almond or coconut milk, and coconut sugar in 2 quart saucepan just until simmering. Remove from heat. Beat in powdered sugar and vanilla. Whisk until smooth. Stir in pecans, if using. 

When cake has been removed from the oven, pour frosting over hot cake and allow to cool completely (about one hour) before cutting.

Notes: 

*You could probably strictly used Sucanat in place of traditional sugar, but it will significantly increase the fiber content so you made need to add more liquid to get a cake-like consistency to the batter.

**To make soured/butter milk, add 1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar in a measuring cup and then add almond or coconut milk to equal 1/2 cup. It will separate and curdle quickly. This is what you want it to do.

***Add the 1 cup of coconut sugar to what you heat in the pan, otherwise your frosting may be gritty. If you want to eliminate the powdered sugar altogether, then cook all coconut sugar in saucepan just until the sugar dissolves. Cooking too much can make it harder to spread onto cake.

More Than I Can Chew

I've realized that as opportunity after opportunity to serve and love in the Name of Jesus has been coming my way, that I'm in a little over my head with everything that is taking place...and that is precisely where He wants me to be.

Absolutely dependency upon Him is what I've been praying for. Desperate longing to see His Kingdom at work all around me is what I've been thirsting for. And amazing Love to see, live, give and breath in is what I've been craving. So He's called me "out upon the waters" [from one of my current favorite worship songs] and I'm diving in [to quote an older Steven Curtis Chapman one] and honestly, I'm humbled at the thought at the beauty of where His current, or should I say riptide, is going to take me.

Only He knows. What I know is that obediently following Him into the vast...amazing...unknown is exactly where I long to be!

Where is He calling you?

Pope Francis Quote of the Day

I have been sharing several quotes from The Joy of the Gospel on Twitter and Facebook, and today thought this one would be great to share with you.

"[A missionary heart] never closes itself off, never retreats into its own security, never opts for rigidity and defensiveness. It realizes that it has to grow in its own understanding of the Gospel and in discerning the paths of the Spirit, and so it always does what good it can, even if in the process, its shoes get soiled by the mud of the street."

The mud of the street, the dung in the horse barn, the nasty water of the laundromat, the trash of the abandoned house...where will your missionary heart lead you to get soiled this week?

Looking Out For Each Other

One of the perks of serving with Mission Year is their emphasis on building community with your neighbors. I've been delighted to hear Abbey's stories of getting to know Miss Dottie and Miss Debbie and others. During last weekend's visit, I enjoyed participating in neighborhood day, which happens every Saturday.

What if each of us took out one day a week from our busy lives, spent it in our neighborhood, walking around, meeting neighbors, only shopping close to home, and investing in our own communities? [That wouldn't work in most of our suburban isolation. How many of us even have a grocery store that we can walk or ride the bus to?] Just think about the implications of investing one whole day each week of time, energy and resources back into your neighborhood.

For me, it was a day of swelling pride and a heart growing bigger with love when I met two of the ladies that are "looking out for" my kid. They both sang the praises to the moms that were visiting for how wonderful our children are and how grateful they are to have them nearby.

What a blessing!

These sweet ladies took a risk letting their young neighbors into their lives. Miss Dottie exclaimed, "I've never let anybody else around here in my house!" These wonderful grandmas have driven the kids to church when it's raining, given them canned food they won't need for themselves, and even let them use their wash machines a few times. As wonderful as these have been, the most profound gift for all has been companionship and another friend to love.

Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman- A Book Review

I read this book over the weekend on my trip to Houston so I could participate in the Curriculum Share time with Abbey and her housemates. Mission Year requires that all of the program participants read a series of books that speak to poverty, the inner city, injustice, love and more.

Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman was reportedly carried around by Martin Luther King, Jr. everywhere he went. He found inspiration within its pages to lead a Civil Rights Movement that our country desperately needed. As I read, I had to keep reminding myself that this book was first published in 1949. Sadly, it seems that not much has changed, aside from some of the language Thurman used which was common to his day.

Abbey was surprised to see the dozens of highlighted quotes in my copy and I was thrilled to engage in this conversation with the Mission Year folks...book studies/clubs are sort of my thing. But if this book were required reading for anyone that serves alongside the "disinherited" of our culture, I believe we would approach ministry with more compassion and depth of knowledge than is often seen. The grandson of a former slave, who grew up in Jim Crow Florida, and was a highly educated, intellectual and close follower of Jesus, has much to say to us even today. 

"FEAR is one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited...The ever-present fear that besets the vast poor, the economically and socially insecure, is a fear of still a different breed. It is a climate closing in; it is like the fog in San Francisco or in London. It is nowhere in particular yet everywhere."

There are numerous quotes that I will return to over and over again, but the most profound image I was left with is a hypothetical story that Thurman relates in an attempt to help the reader understand the mindset of the dispossessed:  What if you were one of five children and all the children in your family received a new pair of shoes, except you? You might be upset, but you'd probably console yourself by saying, 'Well, I'll get my turn next.' But then comes the day when everyone in your family has a large slice of cake and again your are skipped over. This pattern continues time after time with no one else being denied gifts, treats and small pleasures, except you. Your indignation, anger, hatred and even shame begin to rise until you start to question if it's because you are somehow "not worthy" or possibly "less than" and you, in fact, deserve the slights and betrayals.

This is the life of the perpetually disinherited. As the third of four children, I have always had a profound (too profound, actually!) sense of fairness. In my mind, absolutely everything should always be fair and equal. This has, as you can imagine, provided me with hours and hours of frustration, lost relationship, pain, anger and hurt over the years. When someone says, "Well...life's not fair!" I want to scream, "But it should be!"

Somehow, in many of our American Christian churches, we've bought into this idea that everyone can succeed if they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and that each person has the same opportunities as the next. My reply...and after reading Thurman's book, I think he'd agree...is always, "But you're under the assumption that everyone has a pair of boots."

Pride and Stubborness

Jane Austen is one of my all-time favorite authors. And although my situation looked nothing at all like her heroine, Elizabeth Bennet's, this phrase in my title was a play on words that kept humming through my head recently. I don't have a lot of time today to explain, but I think I should at least attempt to try.

Mission Year hosts "Come and See" weekends twice each year in their various service cities. Abbey has long wanted me to come, but I didn't possibly see how I could. (You know where this is going, right?) Well...God being the good Giver of absolutely every perfect gift, as I (and Abbey) began praying for His wisdom and provision, several things "fell" into place that I recognized as being from Him...and some it took a little longer to put together.

First, I kept back some of my Christmas gift money. That is big, right there. Then, I picked up some contract work worth a couple hundred dollars, the very day after Abbey told me she'd be praying for God's provision. I also had two dear friends ready to head out on an 18 hour (one way!) road trip, and to be honest, the hours and hours of girl/Jesus time sounded amazing! One of these friends even has a sweet friend in Houston where we could stay.

Then...like the unforeseen curve in the road, a friend offered me frequent flyer miles to get a free airplane ticket. Suddenly, my well-planned trip had to be reassessed: I couldn't stay with my friend's friend without her. I'm a little afraid of flying. I had it all planned out in my head, Maybe I could take the ticket and pay for a hotel. I'd still have to rent a car in Houston, so would I really be saving that much?

And then He did it.

Yep...this is what I heard: "You are just being stubborn! You ask me to provide and..." I know in that moment if I could actually see the Holy Spirit He would have had His shoulders shrugged, His hands open wide and a look of "Well...what did you expect?" on His face.

My pride and stubbornness was uncomfortable with a free ticket and a free place to stay with a stranger. But these are both Christian hospitality in their finest. There are no strangers in God's family, right?

So tomorrow, bright and early, I'll be taking that flight to Houston and tomorrow night, Abbey will be staying with me in a lovely home with a brother and sister I have yet to meet. I could not have put this all together any better than if I'd actually written the manuscript. It all makes me wonder what other perfect gifts have I missed out on in the past because of my Pride and Stubbornness.

Is there anything that you are missing out on receiving because you've already got it all "figured out"?