I recently had a conversation with a chap about laying up for yourself treasures in heaven (Matt. 6:20).  Normally, when we think about "laying up treasures" for ourselves it's in a selfish and self-serving way.  For instance, when people lay up for themselves money in a retirement account they are most often doing so in order to reach a point when they can stop working and stop serving, and perhaps even have enough stored up to hire servants for themselves.  In other words, the general concept of "laying up treasure" in America is to reach a point where you no...

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I have been doing a lot of thinking about the HOLINESS of God lately.  J.I. Packer points out that when the Bible refers to God as being "Holy" it signifies everything about God that sets Him apart from us and makes Him the object of awe, adoration, and even dread to us.  It covers all aspects of His transcendent greatness and moral perfection and thus is an attribute of all His attributes, pointing to the "Godness" of God at every point.  Every facet of God's nature and every aspect of His character may properly be spoken of as holy, just...

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I was talking to a friend the other day about how "perfect people" are so annoying.  We bantered about how consoling it is to have close personal friendships with people who will admit, and even allow us to see at times, their imperfections.  "Perfect people," on the other hand, make you feel so awfully insecure.  Now of course the idea of any mere mortal actually being perfect is a myth; however, we have all experienced the feeling of insecurity in the presence of someone who is far better than us at some specific thing, or numerous (perhaps seemingly all) things...

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Whenever she sees a nativity scene Maggie (the two year old) says, “Baby Moses!”  Of course the baby in the nativity scene is not Moses, but that does not mean there isn’t a connection.  In fact, the more I ponder it, the more I see baby Jesus foreshadowed in baby Moses.  Here we go:  (1) Baby Moses is born to “no name” parents (literally, they are NOT named! [Exodus 2:1]).  Likewise, Jesus is born to “no name” parents (His dad is a lowly carpenter, and His mother is a teenager).  (2) Moses’ life was threatened (the king of Egypt feared...

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culinary |ˈkələˌnerē; ˈkyoōlə-| of or for cooking       Essentially, culinary art is about the PREPARTION and PRESENTATION of food.  PREPARATION has to do with planning, thinking (e.g. formulating a recipe), gathering ingredients, accounting for everything needed, implementing the plan, putting the pieces together, combining ingredients, emulsifying, marinating, depouillage-ing, stirring, searing, boiling, baking, frying, deboning, acidulating, carmelizing, finger-tip testing, sauté-ing, grating, homogenizing, infusing, julienning, macerating, pare-ing, reconstituting, shucking, tempering, unmolding, venting, warming, whipping, whisking, etc.  PRESENTATION has to do with plating the food, giving attention to the arrangement and composition, having a concern that the excellence/quality of the cuisine...

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