Being the Hands and Feet of Jesus and Touching the Hem of Christ's Robe

I've been hearing these two phrases a lot lately and they have me thinking about what they really mean. Let's start with the first one.. Being the Hands and Feet of Jesus. What does that mean? Well, it's easy to be the hands and feet of those people we love and cherish. Ok, maybe not always easy, but it's easier than someone we don't like. Right? I'm pretty sure though, that Jesus ministered to those who weren't always socially accepted, extremely wealthy, or even dressed nice for that matter. Now, Jesus did minister to everyone. An example of this would be the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus isn't leaving anyone out while he is teaching. He wants all of use to hear his words and to have that relationship with him. Take the woman at the well. We've all heard it before that she was a, well, woman of the night so-to-speak in better terms. It would have been socially unacceptable for Jesus to be talking to this woman. Yet, despite her past, or present, God knew her future. Despite all the critcism Christ would maybe get for talking with this woman, no person is worthless in the eyes of Christ. Christ reached out to the needy, the hungry, the poor, the adulterers, the lame, the sick, etc. When we think of being the hands and feet of Christ, we need to know what that really means. It means, to be the hands and feet of Christ. lol. It means to reach out and show the love of Christ not just to those who are in our "circle of friends", but also to those who you probably wouldn't even think of being friends with. To those who the world would consider socially unacceptable. In blessing others, you are in turn blessing yourself as well. Not as though that should be the only reason we are reaching out. lol. The Bible tells us in Ephesians 5:1-2 that we are to be like Christ. We are to immitate him. I think that even within the church there needs to be some reaching out of our comfort zones. How many people come into a church for the first time and are never once met with a friendly face? Now I am not trying to make people feel guilty here. I am not about that. Guilt-driven service is just not right. (meaning where someone makes you feel guilty to where you serve out of guilt and not out of your own heart and desire) I am passionate about serving. It is my love language. I love to offer up babysitting or offer up to bring food or do small things or big things. For a long time I wanted to glory. I wanted the attention for all the good things I was doing. Through A LOT of humbling, I've actually been enjoying being in the background. I don't like the attention, I don't like the praise, and I don't like what it does to me. It makes me prideful. In reality, it doesn't matter who sees it and what kind of praise you get for whatever because the only one it really matters to is God. Doing it for praise purposes kind of defeats the purpose and elevated self instead of God. Something God is working on with me. I fall into old habits, but am quickly reminded who it's really for. There is that pride word again, but that is for another post. lol. Ok, back to being the hands and feet of Christ. Christ didn't care who saw him talking to who or what people thought about him. He was with the begger, the tax collector, and many others. Honestly, if you look at his lineage, it really doesn't surprise me. He comes from a line of everything under the sun, from murderer to harlet. To me, that is awesome. Anyway, I just wanted to encourage all of you to take some time and really pray about how you can be the hands and feet of Christ. Take some time out of your day to drop cookies at your fire department or police department. Take some time to invite a stressed out mom over for lunch, to the park, or just to come over to your own messy house, just so that she can have an adult conversation. Reach out to the kids in your community or to the elderly couple living next door who needs help with different things. Write your pastor a note of encouragement. Anything! Whatever abilty God gave you, use it to serve him and bless others. You never know how God will use you to plant a seed while being His hands and feet.

Touching the hem of Christ's robe. I hear that and I immediately think of the woman that bled for 12 years. She was living outside the city because in those days a woman was found to be unclean while she bled. So for 12 long years, she was untouched because she was unclean. She had heard of this Jesus who was coming and she, in total and complete faith, just wanted to touch the hem of Christ to be healed. What great faith this woman had. The longing, the desire just to touch her Savior fully knowing she would be healed. I won't go fully into the story, but I think of her faith. She went to this crowd around Christ just be able to touch the hem of his clothes. I think of how often I fail to even come to Christ in prayer for something that is going on. I fail to even believe that Christ will answer my prayers. Imagine how our lives would be if we just had faith that He will take care of us. We like to worry about how we are going to get this or that and how this will work out. Guilty. The Bible tells us to be "anxious for nothing" in Matthew. We are to come to Christ, trusting and knowing that he will answer our prayers. It might not come out how we were thinking, but then again, I have found that none of the "plans" for my life have come out how I really wanted them too or thought they should for that matter. I have to admit that it's hard to come to Christ and have a deep, intimate relationship with Him when you have doubt, pride, anger, jealousy, and the list goes on. God recently has been showing me that I have a pride issue. No, not just a pride issue. I have an enormous pride issue. Pride comes into our lives very subtly until one day, we think we don't need Christ. We think that we have it all and that we are doing it on our own. The truth is that God and God alone gave us that ability, that wisdom, that knowledge, well, everything. It's funny how quickly we forget who we came from or where our talent is from when a little compliment comes our way. I used to throw myself into positions that would get praise. And sometimes it wouldn't even be that. It would be a random note of encouragement telling me how godly of a woman I am and how this person really admires me, etc, etc. Funny how a few innocent comments could fill up my head. This made me feel good. This made me think that "Why yes, yes you are right. I am pretty amazing!" Sad, but true. Then this intense pressure to maintain those compliments becomes very stressful. If I stop getting those compliments, then I must be failing. It's so hard to have all of that pressure on you! Oh wait, it isn't about me. That's right. There is no pressure to be like Christ when everything you do is for His praise, His glory, and His honor. It's amazing how a small compliment can quickly, no rapidly destroy a person's relationship with Christ. Now that is not to say that we shouldn't be encouraging each other or lifting each other up in Christ or paying a nice compliment. What the person does with it is completely on them and God will deal with them. Satan is tricky, very tricky. I think that through the ladies Bible study and Sunday School, I have been learning more and more of how real Satan really is. Not as though I didn't believe before, just real as in, how much he is really really attacking us at every corner. He doesn't want us to seek after God. To desire God. To love God. To grow in God. Satan is not interested in us and does not care about us. We are just pawns in his battle with the Lord, and he will try and try and try and never give up to keep us from touching the hem of Christ's robe. Satan never gives up, which should drive us even more to deepen our relationship with Christ. It should kind of give us a stick-it-to-him type attitude toward Satan. Ok, probably not a good reason to grow closer to God just to get back at Satan, but really, sometimes that is just what I want to do. Kind of say, "What are you going to do now Satan? Bring it!" Yeah, probably not the best attitude. lol. But God did create me this way... just sayin'. lol. Ok, enough being sassy. ;) Touching the hem of Christ seems like it is so hard to accomplish, but it's not. You want to be blessed in touching Him. The Bible tells us, Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be open to you. (paraphrasing) All we have to do is seek after him and trust him and we will touch the hem of Christ's robe.

Day.. um.. again, bad with math..

Today was a good day! I went on a field trip with Abbi's Kindergarten class to Porters Maple Bush Farms. I think that's what it was called. lol. It was really neat to see and hear how Maple is made. when we got there, we all unloaded and got a buddy.. as you can see to the left, I don't think the buddy system worked all too well. The kids all just wanted to run! It was a bit chilly today, so maybe they wanted to stay warm. lol. Abbi was supposed to be my buddy. :) As we were walking to get to the   grove, there were a few trees that had the buckets attached. This wasn't a very good week for collecting sap. The weather has been really cold and they haven't heated up the evaporator thing in a week! There were a lot of Maple trees, but the one we looked at was the largest. That was barely had any sap coming out of it. The sap that was in the buckets was frozen! It was crazy. The biggest maple tree that the man showed us was his favorite. He didn't quite

go into why it was his favorite, but as I looked at it, I could see why

it would be his favorite tree. This tree was enormous! Hunny has been to the redwood  forest, so this is not really huge in comparison. It was large to me though, and I can imagine, large to the kids. lol. Tall and mighty was this tree. It stood tall and proud with wounds from battle with nature and weather, but still it stands. Reminds me of how great and mighty my God is. How he is always standing firm with us through every trial, every struggle, and every tear. He cannot be moved, tore down, or swayed when the going gets tough. So as we continued towards this tree, I noticed that there were at least 4-5 buckest already hanging from this mighty tree. Wow! So date, they already have made 360 jugs of syrup, which for a small company like this with 1000 trees tapped for collecting, that is really good. The collecting the sap process was explained to me later...

The best time for the sap to be collected is before the buds on the tree come. The sap, depending on the weather, travels up the tree, but then as it gets colder, goes back down the tree. When the buds start to come, all the sap goes directly to the buds to help them grow and then you can no longer tap a tree to collect sap. I am sure there is more to it and he did explain it a bit better than I can. lol. Here are a few pictures of his tapping a tree to show us how the sap is collected and how it comes out of the tree...     

It was a very cool process that the kids thought was really cool. :) Or at least they thought it was cool that "water" was coming out of the tree. Then they all had to put their hands under it and let it drip on their mittens. Of course they had to lick it too! After he was done showing us how to tap a tree, the kids let loose a bit and played for a few minutes before heading back to where they actually made the maple.

After some playing in the saw dust, Oops! we headed back to the place they made the syrup. And of

course, no field trip is complete without a few class pictures! lol. I did take a couple, but I will spare you all of them. I didn't really have a good one of the kids, but this is the best out of all of them. Trying to round them up after running back from the grove was a lot of fun too! All this fresh air and wide open spaces to run around and get some energy out, who wants to sit still for a picture?! lol. It was good though. We did finally get some pictures and then it was time to head into the building behind the class. Once everyone was all lined up, we were able to head inside, but not before a few more details first. At the front of the

line, you'll notice a very large 55 gallon barrel to your left. Then you'll notice the 1 gallon jug of maple syrup that the man is holding up. In the 55 gallon barrel, there is sap. I didn't get a picture of a huge tank that holds 2000 gallons of sap, which wasn't even the biggest tank they had! The biggest one was inside the building, but we didn't get to see that one. So, back to the little 55 gallon barrel. It takes one 55 gallon container to make 1 gallon of syrup. Yes, you heard me! That is so crazy! So.. then it was time to head inside. Once inside, there was a huge machine that is used to heat up the sap and evaporate the water inside the sap. In evaporating a lot of sap, you get the maple syrup. Depending on the season and just the right weather, you can get different thicknesses and different colors of syrup. Some people like the real light syrup which I believe is the fancy syrup. It goes all the way from light to

different shades of dark. The picture to the right is of the machine that evaporated the water from the sugary stuff inside the sap, making syrup. He then went on to say that if you heat up the syrup to where it is too hot, then it crystalizes. This is what makes maple candy. Yes, I did try one because I didn't want to be rude. I know that I am fasting from sweets and desserts, but I made an exception. It was seriously ALL sugar! Way too sweet for me and too sweet for some of the kids. After he was all done explaining and going through the whole making syrup process, the owner came out with little cups of syrup. Really now!? So everyone got a cup of warm syrup. Yum! It really was delicious and sweet. I took a sip of Abbi's. So as we are standing there, Abbi takes a sip and says, "Mom, this tastes just like syrup!" I was like, "That's because it is, silly. They make it here." (Abbi) "They MAKE it here!" Really? Was she not paying attention? ahahahahah I laughed a little because the man seriously JUST got done explaining everything. lol. So I explained it to her in a more understand

able way and a shorter version too. :) She makes me laugh a lot!

All in all, we had a great trip! We got a surprise when we found out we were able to go up to the owners house and see some baby pigs that were just born a few weeks ago! A great end to a really great day! Best of all, I got to spend some more time with Abigail!  



Songs

The last 2 songs I posted are my songs right now. Besides This is the Stuff by Francesca Batechelli or however you spell it. These songs are so amazing. Grace is just a humbling song. It's like a prayer to my Papa. A prayer of offering myself to him to do as he wants, despite my many failures. Closer is my desire to obviously be closer to God. These are my prayers to my Papa!

Shawn McDonald - Closer (Lyric Video)

Laura Story - Grace

Cakes

Seeing as I doubt the assistant pastor is going to be reading my blog any time soon.. here are some pictures of the cakes I made for the church for his 10 year anniversary at the church..

I think they turned out pretty cool. :)

Laura Story - Grace