Christmas Pomegranate Recipes

Well, reader, you will obviously be expecting a Christmas pomegranate recipe so I’ll give you one, my favorite, but this only started my thoughts for a blog.

Seed a pomegranate, rinse and drain.  Pour them, sparkling red, into a small, colorful Christmas bowl, place that in the center of an appetizer platter with all your other favorite Christmas snacks, add a cute spoon, and watch them disappear!

Even though I looked up the easiest way to seed a pomegranate on Google, it was still time-consuming – though not nearly as much as the old way I was doing it before!  (Old way: peeling random sections of skin off, gently digging into a seed section, peeling off pulp, and so forth).

I got to thinking about things that take a lot of your time, but are worth the result – both in color and flavor,  like pomegranates!  There are a lot of these, but one of my favorites under this category is marriage.

Today I took my husband outside to show him things that had accumulated on the property since we finished several yard and house projects in the spring and summer months.  Things that need to go to recycle centers or the burn pile in the field, or the trash can.  I know, from being married to him so long, that I would have to do this delicately.  This is because my husband is a collector and he actually fears throwing things away that might come in handy someday.  Additionally, he grew up in a cluttered home on cluttered property – having had a hard-working, single mom who didn’t have time or money to give to her home and for whom neatness was not so very important.  Hoarding….saving….these were values she passed on to her three children….probably because she was a young child during the depression, and childhood life skills are not soon forgotten.

My husband’s own childhood values too, are not soon forgotten.  He is comfortable with clutter:  I am not!  Take, for example, his bathroom counter.  I have to scrub mine shiny fairly often and put away accumulated jewelry, hairbands or coins that I leave there.  I can’t stand a dirty or cluttered bathroom countertop or sink for very long. 

My man, on the other hand, saves things like movie ticket stubs, every receipt for every item he has purchased for the last 12 months, tiny nails, screws from wood projects, every key he has ever owned, faded unframed school pictures of grandkids with spots of toothpaste and water spray from his sink, and so many other miscellaneous, NOT-bathroom-related items that I cannot count them all.  And he likes to leave them all on his bathroom counter….to lie amidst layers of dust, water spots, toothpaste spray and soap splatter, shavings of white antipersperant that missed his armpits,  alongside empty or near-empty contac solution containers…oh yes and did I say empty antipersperant rollers because he might be able to get one more wipe to the “pit”, from the empty mini-post-holes in the containers’ applicators?  The only surface left uncluttered is the sink bowl itself, and it is covered with said toothpaste and soap splatter, which are also liberally splashed on the mirror.

I remember the first time I couldn’t stand it anymore so I cleaned his bathroom counter off, sorting and putting away everything, throwing away trash like candy wrappers and shirt tags he’d torn off, then moving things I knew he was saving to a more hidden place on a shelf in his closet (three steps away and through a door).  WWIII broke out!  This was HIS stuff and HIS space and how DARE I touch it!  At first I thought, wow, what was in those receipts he was afraid I’d see?  Because I could not imagine such a reaction from simply moving and cleaning and telling someone EXACTLY where everything was.  But, really, he was ready for me to pack a bag and go stay at my mom’s!

I’m sure my reaction was not so kind, I recall words like “ridiculously high value placed on bathroom counter collections”, and “ludicrous attachment to an insane use of a bathroom counter”….yeah not real helpful… for him.  But intensely satisfying for me.

But that was many many years ago.  Now, every four to six months, when I absolutely cannot stand it any longer, I ask my man if he would MIND cleaning his bathroom counter, and he does it.  Never to my satisfaction, but the receipts get moved to the shelf in the closet, the little things get SORT of categorized and placed in the oblong-shaped woven basket I put there for him.  A three-tiered bathroom “rack” holds his medicines, contac solutions, and things that clearly don’t belong on a bathroom counter, but what the hey at least they’re not ON the counter surface, and one can actually see the tile.

Did I mention that our countertops are beautiful – a gorgeous blue tile that simply glows when clean and polished!?

Like the patience needed to seed a pomegranate, I had to decide to use great patience with a man who loves me dearly, but who has an inordinate affection for clutter and the items he clutters with.  Did I mention sentiment is also part of the attachment?  I had never met anyone before who felt sentimental about things like receipts, movie ticket stubs, keys to places and cars long gone and notes I’d scribbled to him in a hurry…at least not sentimental enough to keep them on a bathroom counter!   Nor met someone who didn’t mind when these items get covered with water and soap scum/splatter….until the paper items are no longer readable!  It just seems insane to me.   To attempt to understand my man and to keep peace in my marriage, I had to compromise and use great patience … to be tolerant of someone very, very different from myself, and diametrically opposed to what “normal” in my own life….and for most people I personally know!

Now, take the bathroom counter scenario, add a 2-car garage, every tool a man could possible have or want that would both fit and NOT fit into it, and five acres that surrounds a very large home.

If I told you it’s been a twelve-year battle since we moved into this house, would you believe me?  I’m thinking yes.

But let me tell you the wonderful things about him!  He is very intelligent, he is a design engineer for a leading electronics company.  He has several patents under his name, travels to distant places, is responsible for saving his company millions of dollars by designing electronics as frugally as possible.

But I have seen his workspace at work, too!  The only time it is neat and clean is when he is required to move his cubicle to another part of the building with his team.  The rest of the time, it’s just like his bathroom counter – expanded multiple times the surface space.

My husband is also a very loving man.  He is deeply in love with me, and he married me when I had three young boys to finish raising, becoming the father they never had (who had deserted them and moved states away).  They are all grown now with children of their own, and we are all very close as a family.

One of his nicknames is “Mr Christmas” because that is his favorite holiday and he goes “all out” with decorations – lights inside and out.  It was so contagious that I became his full-on decorating partner and we have a GREAT time getting our house ready every year….to the ooooh’s and aaaaaaaw’s of family because we try to never do it the same.

Another of his nicknames is “always the teacher” because he used every opportunity to teach about anything musical or scientific – his two academic loves.  He would get the kids up on Saturday mornings, and instead of cartoons, they got to watch him draw lines, scales, notes, and chords on a white board in the living room to the sounds of a lecture on music theory.  Our five children were all required to take piano for at least five years before they could switch to another instrument or form of musical expression.  Grumbling through those years, but grateful today, he is still “ever the teacher” to them, and now, to the grandchildren.

I wonder, sometimes, are there any other men (or women) out there who are such a dichotomy of personalities?  I’ve met other engineer’s wives who complain of similiar eccentric values and behaviors, but none quite so extreme as my husband’s – perhaps, however, they are lying?  I am laughing because I have told so very few people how cah-razy he really can be sometimes.  (I haven’t even told YOU everything!)

Marriage is a lot of work when you are much alike with your mate, but when you have diametrically-opposed values in any category, it takes a lot of talking (calmly, whenever possible), a desire to hold back sarcasm, and an ear to listen to reasons that make absolutely no sense when you ask “why”.  It takes a relentless pursuit of forgiveness…and letting yourself forget things said in the heat of the moment….on both sides.

It also keeps life colorful and interesting…how boring would it be if we never had any conflicts, any completely opposite ideas about things?  And how would we learn to live with people very different from ourselves, in our own home, so that we can be far more tolerant of those who don’t live with us?  I think marriage is the practice ground for everyday tolerance, for everyday compromise and for learning selflessness that is truly self-LESS.

I will say more about this later, but let this be a start.  I would love any feedback from compadres married to men (or women) with similiar goods and similiar evils!

While I’m waiting for bread to rise….

I love the smell of yeast and bread rising, and even more the smell of it baking.  I’m always a little impatient at the rising part because I can’t wait for the baking part.  I’m not sure if I like the smell of freshly-baked bread even more than the taste of it!  And since too much bread just turns to fat thighs and belly in mid-life, I try to do just that!

But while I”m waiting, I’d love to hear from anyone who runs across this blog, what you love about the whole Body of Christ in the earth!  Then, if you want to, what you love about some of the individual parts – what do you love about the Methodists, the Catholics, the Baptists, the Lutherans, the Church of God-ites (LOL), the Vineyard-ites, the Pentecostals, the Charismatics?  Whatever you call them, or whatever they call themselves, in what ways have they and the truths they carry (or guard jealously with fervent zeal!) blessed your relationship to the Father and to Jesus and to the Holy Spirit?

….and they were all with one heart and one mind…

….I urge you, brethren to agree with one another….

…..the unity of the faith….that there may be no schisms among you…

Looking for the things that bless and the ways we agree – these are what we should be striving for, so that the world may say “oh how they love one another!” and want the Father Who has adopted us all through His Son Jesus!!

Persecution of Christians in the U.S. – what will it look like?

I’ve always been interested in Christian persecution, though I was  a subscriber to The Voice of the Martyrs magazine for only a short time.   I’ve read Fox’s Book of Martyrs, and own a 150 yr old book called The Cross and The Crown (no longer in circulation) that chronicles the history and sufferings of the Church, focusing primarily on three European groups who suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church.  I like the book “Jesus Freaks”.  I’ve kept pace, generally speaking, of persecution of Jesus people in the earth today.

What I’ve noticed (where Christianity has already been established, like Europe and the U.S.) is an age-old pattern:  Typically, the oldest moves of God fall into legalism, tradition and “religion” over time, often associated with criticism of any moves outside their own.  Then they persecute the newest moves of God, – sometimes even desiring and pursuing  the death of those who they consider the new heretics of the faith, sometimes with the support or permission of government and sometimes without it (or separate from it).  Believing they are doing God a favor, they fulfill the very same prophesy about them.

The Catholic Church, as we know from history, has its origins in the earliest Christians’ foundations, i.e., it was not evil in the beginning, but full of power.  Christianity grew, the early disciples having ”turned the world upside down” for a few generations!   Spreading quickly within a few hundred years, it seemed nearly all of the major, known civilized countries embraced Christ!  So large was the church, that thousands of  government officials had also been converted, and the culture was changed because lawmakers found Him. This was a good thing …for a time…a dream-come-true for those who had dared to dream that big!  And, naturally, God’s plan for earth’s history just following His Son’s mission to mankind. 

Simultaneously,  however, bad doctrines had begun to seep in and eventually, Church and State were “joined at the hip” in a partnership that would lead to some of the worst crimes against followers of Jesus and others who would not bow to the false doctrines and oppressions that ensued, the worst of which have been labeled The Inquisitions and The Crusades.  In the name of Jesus Christ,  the once-powerful, previous move of God had eroded into a dry, stale, legalistic and Pharasaical form whose understanding of Scriptures became interpreted by the natural mind apart from the spiritual one.  Established and approved by the government, it was given power to persecute any seeming “naysayers” of “the Faith”.   In Jesus name, opposers of “The Faith” (as named by “The (established) Church”) were murdered.

Of course, this history has far more detail than I’m citing here, but that’s it in capsule form.  It’s not difficult to see the same pattern continue in church history.

Though I’m not a history buff, nor a graduate of Bible school, I know that the Middle and Dark Ages didn’t appear to hold much hope for a resurrection of the true Church of Jesus Christ.  It seems that only a handful of devoted followers of Jesus made some dents in the mostly-religious or mostly-pagan societies that dominated the known world…for hundreds, yes nearly two thousand years.  But God always had, and always will have a remnant who will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. He began to unveil the very basic foundational truths in the last centuries, using ordinary men and women who dared to challenge the religious or spiritual “status quo”.  This, I feel, will always be the way Father God introduces the next restoration of a truth that has been lost.  And, each time, the movement will be associated with power and unexpected presentations of His manifested presence.

Christians are being persecuted widely every day in the world, but we here in the U.S. have not seen more than a sprinkling of it, and most has been propaganda.    Hollywood has done a good job for 75 years making Christians look like psychotics or idiots in films for years.  But I think we are coming into an era of greater degrees of persecution against followers of Jesus, here in the good ol’ U.S.A.  and, as always, it has begun with a war of words, misrepresentation and false accusation – by well-meaning FELLOW followers of Jesus!  

This is not a new thing.  The established churches of their days persecuted the “new” protestants,  methodists,  presbyterians, quakers,  antibaptist, baptists, pentecostals and charismatics as God restored truths and encounters of God to the earth.   While the already-established churches or denominations of their day may have longed for God to restore the church to the glory She had in the first century, when He actually poured out His Spirit and His Truth for levels of that restoration, there were those who did not like what they heard and saw.  These became the persecutors.  Whether it was Martin Luther, John Edwards, or Amee Semple McPherson that carried revival to a nation, the older, established church could not sympathize with what was emerging.  All of these heroes were named heretics by their “Christian” brethren who did not understand what God was doing, and who interpreted new revelation and experience by old and stale doctrine. 

Usually it’s misunderstanding and broken friendships that begin persecution.  The new tries to explain to the old what God is doing in and through them, and the old is suspicious and doubtful (and, by all rights, proud of his spiritual heritage).  The old cannot understand, if God is going to do something new, why He did not pick them, or their movement, for the outpouring.  Like Naaman the leper, they wanted their own rivers to be good enough if God was going to bring healing.  Sparks sometimes fly, as will happen with human beings, and things are said on one or both sides that risk the friendship.  Friends part due to perceived differences, and the persecution begins.   God knows what is true defense of His plans, His ways, His truth oupoured, and what is persecution of that and time tells the story by the signs that follow – millions who come to Christ, get saved, healed, delivered and begin to transform their communities again – just as happened in the previous moves of God.  And the trickle-down effect of these moves generally influences the whole Church over time, even if it gets diluted and “re-explained” in terms of one’s denominational “allowances”.  I have seen evidence of this from both the Jesus/Charismatic movements and the recent Renewal/Prophetic movements of God….the whole church is eventually benefitted in SOME way…which is always God’s plan in the end.  But it does not come without this persecution of the new by the old….and at the cost of some broken friendships, families and split churches/denominations.

In truth, God has almost always picked the hungry-at-heart, regardless of academic or economic standing, in spite of race, creed or color.  William Seymour (Azusa St. Revival) was a little-known black preacher, blind in one eye and not particularly articulate.  William had a deep hunger that brought about the revelation God gave him for the Baptism in the Holy Spirit – through the teachings of a white preacher who would not even let him sit in the main sanctuary (so William sat out in the hallway, so hungry was he to hear).  And it was William who, during the height of racism towards the new black “freedman”, went to California with his experience and his revelation, ushering in the lost truth that began the world-wide Pentecostal movement…which continues to be questioned, even persecuted by well-meaning non-Pentecostals in the world today.  When this truth poured out again in the 1970′s, and members of nearly every Christian denomination began to experience the fullness of the Spirit , it was tagged the Charismatic movement.   Instead of one person spearheading the movement, however, there were several little-known men and women of God who welcomed it and made room for God to break out of the religious box that religious dogma had held captive, millions of people who loved the Lord.   All too often,   God simply showed up unexpectedly in churches whose members were crying out for more of His Spirit.   They would be filled, speak in tongues and be asked to leave their churches who could not doctrinally embrace the experience.  Simultaneously, millions of people were getting saved seemingly at the drop of a hat.  Almost “only the mention” of Jesus’ name aroused a desire to know Him!

The war has been the Spirit vs. the Word, or rather a previous understanding of the Word vs. new revelation by and of the Holy Spirit and His ways and thoughts (which are always higher than our own).  Everyone says they want both the Holy Spirit in all His fullness and outcome, and the powerful truths of the Scriptures.  However, revelation is awakened  because the Bible is a supernatural book which can only be understood or discerned supernaturally.  It even says that about itself – the natural man cannot understand spiritual things.  The natural mind cannot comprehend things that can only be comprehended by the eternal spirit of a man or woman who has been born into the Kingdom of God through salvation.    Similiarly, a saved man or woman usually adopts ”absolutely” (often from the denomination where salvation took place), the rest of his/her theology, some of which God may consider  “subject to change”   through revelation imparted at times and places and in situations of HIS choosing.  When this absolute adoption takes place, the follower of Jesus is less able to receive those changes when they occur, because he or she has moved from leaning completely on the Author of the Bible, a living Supernatural Being who adds to the cosmos daily with a touch of one finger, to leaning on his/her own understanding (or his/her denomination’s) of that same Bible.  Love for the Author, experience with the Author, worship of the Author has been diminished and the place of the author’s book given a higher ranking in the human heart.  

This is the most dangerous and devious idolatry of all in Christendom, because the Bible is loved, as it should be.  But if it is revered above its Author, Who is not His book, but the only One who can explain the Book!  This makes men and women who do not want to depend on a BEING, but on black and white printed words on pages, feel insecure and unsafe.  Whereas God, not man, gets to decide how to confirm His Word where it is being preached accurately, and He has said it shall be “with signs following!”  THESE signs shall follow those who believe:  they will speak with new tongues, they will cast out demons, they will heal the sick and raise the dead.  These are the signs, the confirmations, –  that the power of God is confirming the preaching and the living out of the Word – as God would have it be preached in the day.   These “signs that follow” reveal “those who believe” – not all those, but those who are believing today, on the cutting edge, carrying revival.    But even what we are learning today, what new revelation is being poured out on those with ears to hear, is probably subject to change tomorrow!  Not subject to a change that opposes what we have learned, but a change that EXPANDS it.   Why?  Because we will always, in my opinion, be moving from glory to glory and from strength to strength, being PERFECTED in the faith!   There will also always be weak and fallible human beings, hungry to present God as He wants to be presented, who will be subject to sin and temptation just as everyone else is – and perhaps even greater targets because they dare to challenge the comfort zone that Satan is happy to keep the saints inside of.    These brave souls are as subject to unkindnesses, to moral sin, and to becoming ‘established’ in a doctrine as the next guy!

Christianity never works unless it is organic – it is a living, breathing, changing, challenging encounter with Almighty God through His Son Jesus Christ, revealed through ordinary, often broken or weak people who brazenly dare to believe there must be more!   It is a dynamic, always moving, always growing, fluid-and-always-changing relationship between God and His children.  Let me repeat: we who believe there’s always more, will likely move from glory to glory and from strength to strength, probably every decade in this last part of man’s history, never settling for one glory or one strength, never sitting down in the faith.  This is why it is called a walk, or a run for the prize which is to know Jesus Christ, His glory and the fellowship of His sufferings!!   If we are not moving from old, established, already-conquered spiritual territory to new lands in the Spirit, we are not moving at all! And those who stay back and shout “heretic” at those champions who are running in the forefront and blazing the trail through the bramblebushes and tangle of confusion and emotion, are simply insecure at the thought of running where they have not run before, encountering new enemies and learning to defeat them in Jesus’ name.  Some are afraid of people who might abuse a new move, or who might act or look or be foolish…for mighty moves of God have, and always will ALSO attract foolish people.  

And those who sit on the sidelines and simply watch, heckle, or cheer are missing out on the joy of the run!  Worse yet, are those who have dropped out of the race and returned to the safe place of established, old doctrine, from which they perch on a chair to watch and criticize….probably the saddest response of all…and the greatest waste of time and gifting and effort for His Kingdom.

There are those who get comfortable and don’t want to move.  There are those who are afraid to move because of feared persecution. There are those who are intellectually Christians who depend solely on their minds to lead them.  There are those who do not want to be named with those who are highly criticized by the establishment (of the older denominations/movements).  And, sadly, there are those who, like the Pharisees, were at one time given the seats of authority in the Church but have transferred their allegiance to  the letter of the law rather than the Spirit of God…Who is, like I said, fluid and supernatural. 

Jesus Christ, the powerful, wonder-working Savior, Healer, Redeemer, is the same yesterday, TODAY, and FOREVER.  Wherever Jesus is, miracles are happening.  The people went to where He was, bringing their sick, because of the reports of miracles.  It is the same today.

I see this pattern repeating itself over and over throughout history, and again today.  There is more than one “emerging church” right now, in my opinion – there is the church that is going to persecute anything that is not fundamental/evangelical (i.e. persecute anyone who speaks in tongues, or who speaks in tongues outside of his private prayer closet, or who pursues the supernatural God of healing, signs, dreams, wonders and miracles, and/or the prophetic movement of God in the earth today.) 

And there is another emerging church that is coming from theological, academic circles which is compromising with political correctness and immorality to “keep pace” with the culture and be “relevant”.  One is as dangerous to the Church, and to the plans of God for the Church, as the other.  But both are necessary to separate the men from the boys, and the spiritual from the natural in the Body of Christ.

Where do you see yourself going these days?  Where do you think you fit, as an attesting follower of Jesus?  Because if, like Paul, you want to know Jesus in both His glory and the fellowship of His sufferings, you will be asked to make a choice in the days ahead.

Jesus said you will know them by their fruit.  The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.  Be sure to measure commentaries online by these fruits.  For when a person claiming to be a brother or sister in Christ is breathing hot criticisms and accusing those whose ministries are evidencing the same fruits of love, and the signs Jesus promised would follow, she/he will stand before God as equally as those ministries criticized and accused.  I would rather err on the side of mercy to my fellow believers than err on the side of judgment, for in the way you hotly judge, you yourself will be hotly judged. 

I choose to look for those things that Jesus said to look for that evidence who God is blessing.  I’ve been physically healed, more than once, at many of the ministries taking the greatest hits, especially on the internet, from fellow believers who have been offended by the ways of God that don’t agree with their owned doctrine, and it saddens me greatly.

I choose to follow Jesus, to go where He is moving, where lives are changing, where people are turning to Jesus, where congregations are changing their cities with the love of Jesus and the power of healing and deliverance.  And where I sense the saints love one another.  These are the ones who are NOT on the internet blasting the ministries of those who are attacking them.  That’s how you can know who is walking in love and who is not.