blowtorch

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

-Matthew 3:11

I just baptized my marshmallows with fire.  I love you, Fat Boy. 

in a broad place

Thou hast set my feet in a broad place.

-Psalm 31:8

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down,

and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,

O Lord, you know it completely,

You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Shē’ōl, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and he light around me become night,"

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works; 

that I know very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance,

In your book were written all the days that were formed for me,

when none of them as yet existed.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them--they are more than the sand;

I come to the end--I am still with you.

These are the first eighteen verses of Psalm 139.  Isn't it beautiful?  It's also alarming.  God knows us so deeply, sees everything we do, is always there.  I used to run from these words, but I've begun to find life in them.  

In his book The Spirit of Life Moltmann reflects on the way in which God both guards our hearts and sets us free.  On Psalm 31:8 ("you have set my feet in a broad place") he says "The divine Spirit is experienced as the Lord who sets free, and as the free space in which 'there is no more cramping.'"  Yet in the beautiful paradox of life in the Spirit, "it can also be said that 'Thou encompasseth me from every side' (Ps. 139:5); and people who have this experience know that they are kept safe and set free in the broad place of the Spirit in which they can breathe deeply and unfurl their potentialities."

I wish I lived in that open living space all the time, but the sad truth is that I am so often cramped in my anxious, self-focused existence.  And yet I believe there will come a day when we are all set free to live in a broad place, hemmed in by the love of God.


Source: Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, p. 277

spicy pumpkin soup

Better is a dinner of vegetables where love is than a fatted ox and hatred in it.

Proverbs 15:17

This soup is delicious.  We eat it with grilled swiss cheese sandwiches.  Make it sometime!

Spicy Pumpkin Soup

4 tbsp unsalted butter

2 medium yellow onions, chopped

2 teaspoons minced garlic

1/8 to 1/4 teaspoons crushed red pepper

2 teaspoons curry powder

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

Pinch of ground cayenne pepper

3 cans pumpkin or 6 cups roasted pumpkin puree*

5 cups chicken or vegetable broth or water

2 cups of milk

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup heavy cream (you can substitute milk or half and half)

Melt butter in a big pot and cook the onions and garlic in it over medium-ish heat until soft (just a few minutes).  Stir in the spices and cook for about one more minute.  Add pumpkin and broth; mix well.  Boil and reduce heat, simmering for 15 minutes.

Little by little blend the soup in your blender (food processor works too) till it's good and smooth.  Then return it to the pot.  Over low heat add the brown sugar and slowly stir in the milk and then the cream.  If your broth isn't salty, add salt to taste.  

*I made pumpkin puree with leftover Halloween pumpkins after buying eight for youth group kids to carve (they never got carved).  They are still good over a month later!  You're supposed to use sugar pumpkins, but these taste just fine.  For instructions on making homemade pumpkin puree, go here: pumpkin puree recipe.  

Sources: Simply Recipes, for soup, adapted from Oprah magazine

               Annie's Eats, for pumpkin puree