Transfiguration

Last Wednesday morning - Valentine's Day - I worked on a future blog post. It combined sunset photos and a few light-on-ice photos from Quivira National Wildlife Refuge that hadn't yet made it into the blog or my Facebook page. On that Ash Wednesday, the blog post also had a tie-in to the transfiguration of Jesus, which was the Scripture and theme for Pastor Benjamin's sermon the previous week. 

I was happy with it and thought it was a fitting beginning to the season of Lent in the Christian year. I hadn't written a devotional-type blog for awhile, and as I went upstairs to work on dinner prep, I thought that it would only take a re-read and a little polishing before I hit "publish" the next Tuesday. 

But then Wednesday afternoon happened. The senseless shooting in the midst of celebration of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade - plus some personal stuff - had me tossing and turning that night. Eventually, I gave up and got out of bed, attempting to find a way to shut off my overactive brain. It was a short night. My well-articulated Thursday morning list was in disarray with other unexpected distractions. 

So much for planning ahead. So, why not do a little mindless Facebook skimming, right? I was behind anyway. And then I clicked on a link provided by an acquaintance from my days in K-State's Concert Choir. On her post, she shared that she'd linked this same choir piece to her Facebook page four years before, and unfortunately, it was relevant yet again. 

The piece is Let My Love Be Heard by Jake Runestad. It was performed by the Bob Cole Conservatory Chamber Choir as a tribute to one of their members killed in a mass shooting in Paris in 2015. (I actually wrote a blog post back in November 2015 about the Paris shooting, too, with a link to another song. (Click HERE for "God Bless Us Every One.")

The words to Jake Runestad's beautiful choral composition say:

Angels where you soar up to God's own light

Take my own lost bird on your hearts tonight

And as grief once more mounts to heaven and sings

Let my love be heard

Let my love be heard

Whispering in your ways

Let my love be heard. 

 

As I sat there with tears running down my face, I realized that perhaps my Facebook skimming wasn't so pointless after all. 

 

The simple - yet overwhelmingly powerful - words of that song preached a more powerful lesson than any blog post. Or any sermon. 

Let my love be heard.

 

I certainly try for that to happen. I spent the rest of the day on Thursday working on a meal for Core, a group works to help get people out of poverty. Our church is just one of the meal providers, taking our turn about once a quarter or so. While I was the planner and the cook, many congregation members contributed money for the ingredients to make it happen. 

 

And I remembered back to the Sunday before, when I'd taken a photo of the children at church, standing by a big pile of food donated for the local food bank as part of a Souper Food Drive on Super Bowl Sunday. 

 

Our little church collected 249 pounds of food, but we were just a tiny cog in a much larger effort for the church conference. Some 84 churches from the Great Plains UMC donated food to help Team KC collect 168,253.66 pounds of food during the Super Bowl drive. The California churches supporting the San Francisco 49ers collected 32,945 pounds. In all, 221 churches across the four conferences took part.

 

That's a victory for local food banks - no matter where the food was tallied. We couldn't accomplish that alone.

But I also had to acknowledge that I wasn't letting "my love be heard" when I commented to Randy about another acquaintance's Facebook post.

I can do better. We can all do better. 

 

I need to be part of the harmony so beautifully illustrated by that spectacular choir. 

I started writing. I changed 90 percent of what I had in the original blog post. But then I looked again at what I'd written to begin with. It included this quote on Jesus' transfiguration written by Scott Clark, a Presbyterian minister. 

 

Transfiguration brings us to the place where the words run out and invites us into the holy experience of silence. The silence between the words. The place where we meet God in ways that words simply cannot express.  

Another shooting? Yes, definitely the words had run out. 

Another email devotional included this prayer:

May our gifts reflect the warming light of your love in our lives. Just as Jesus was transfigured before them, may our hearts be transformed, and our actions reflect the love and truth Jesus embodies. Bless our giving and use it to bring your divine light to a world in need. In the name of Jesus, our Lord, we pray. Amen.

Looking for God in my today ... that seems like a good goal to me.

  

Stick to Your "Core" Meals

 

Back when I was a Pratt County 4-Her, we worked in the fair's concession stand during the county fair. Sloppy joes provided the mainstay of the noon-day meal. 

As a kid, you don't give a lot of thought to the behind-the-scenes work required. You just show up during your scheduled shift and do the assigned tasks.

But, as I became the 4-H parent and community leader in Stafford County, I remembered those sloppy joes. Then, I was the one responsible for the Stafford County Fair clean-up meal or fundraisers that required a roaster full of a main dish. And my mom got the inevitable phone call asking about that old recipe. I've passed that torch on to the next generation of 4-H parents.

It's Pratt County Fair time this week, but I won't make it to my home county for the fair. There are bigger attractions for me to the east at the Shawnee County Fair. Kinley is back for another year exhibiting in the fair, and Brooke is a first-year 4-Her, showing her projects for the first time. So Grandma and Grandpa will go and check out their fair entries. (Today is foods judging, so I'm anxious to hear how they did.)

I'm not sure whether sloppy joes are still a staple at Pratt County or not. But I'm still using the old Pratt County sloppy joe recipe for things like the Stafford Core meal. Core is a program that helps our community's families overcome poverty through budgeting, peer counseling and fellowship. Each Monday, different community groups provide the meal for Core families before their scheduled meeting. 

I'm the organizer for our church's efforts. It was our turn again last month. As is usually the case, Randy provided the muscle in carting everything to the car and then into the church.

Sloppy joes were on the menu. (I've done other meals, too - meatballs, tostadoes, cavatini, taco soup and a baked potato bar - most more than once).

With our sloppy joes, we also served baked beans, potato chips and coleslaw with homemade dressing. And, of course, there were homemade cookies for dessert. (I had some pretzel bites left over from the rehearsal dinner, too, so I shared those, too.)

As we sat at the tables, visiting with Core members, I noticed this sign:

Isn't that the truth?

Do you need a meal for a crowd? These are tried-and-true recipes to add to your recipe arsenal.

Sloppy Joes for a Crowd

Pratt County Fair concession stand

10 pounds browned hamburger (Brown with chopped onion or dried minced onion)

4 cans regular chicken gumbo soup 

1 1/2 cups ketchup

3/4 cup mustard

1 tsp. salt

Pepper to taste

 

Brown meat and onion and drain. Put meat in a roaster and add all other ingredients. Simmer in a roaster until thickened and ready to serve. The original recipe said it served 100. Servings must have been a lot smaller back. Today, I'd say it serves half of that (probably bigger buns). 

NOTE: Chicken gumbo soup is difficult to find these days. This time, I substituted Campbell's Old-Fashioned Tomato Rice. It worked well.

Coleslaw Dressing for a Crowd 

Recipe origin unknown

3/4 cup vinegar

1 cup salad oil

1 1/4 cups sugar

1/2 tsp. pepper

1 tsp. salt

1 tbsp. celery seed

1 cup salad dressing or mayonnaise

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth and emulsified. Pour into a quart jar and refrigerate until ready to use. Use over shredded cabbage or coleslaw mix. I usually keep a jar of this dressing in my refrigerator each summer to use on home-grown cucumbers. (I like my cucumbers with vinegar, but Randy likes a more creamy version. This dressing recipe has fit the bill.)

For the Core meal, this amount of dressing covered about 4 bags of coleslaw mix. You can certainly shred or chop your own. Using packaged coleslaw mix just saved me some time and effort when I was making all the other components in the meal.