The strangest thing happened here over the weekend. Water kept falling out of the sky. We haven't seen anything like that in quite some time. It's going to take a lot more of it to get us out of our 30-inches-below-normal drought and get Lake Travis up, which is 50 feet lower than normal. But it's a start! And it kept the temperature down and made it feel like fall!I may be the last person to discover this, but I found the coolest widget. When I have a giveaway, I get weary of pulling up a new window and going to the random number generator site to pick the winner. But I just discovered they have a widget that is now in my sidebar, and now I can enter the range of numbers right here on my blog and get the winner! Is this not the coolest thing or what?!
Busy day today - our new Senior Pastor arrived this weekend so I'm fixing some breakfast goodies for tomorrow's staff meeting. One thing I'm going to make is something a friend of my MIL's brought when we were in Houston following my FIL's death. It's her trademark coffeecake, and Oh. My. Goodness! It is so absolutely delicious. She shared the recipe and I've found very similar ones on the internet. I'm not sure why it has the name it does; it could just as easily be called Baptist Coffee Cake! And I have to admit: the make-everything-from-scratch
JEWISH COFFEE CAKE
1 pkg yellow or white cake mix
1/2 c. cooking oil
4 eggs
1 small pkg vanilla instant pudding
1 c. sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla
Mix above ingredients with mixer and set aside.
Combine the following:
1/3 c. sugar
1 tsp. cocoa
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 c. nuts
Mix with fork into batter. Pour into greased and floured bundt pan OR 2 loaf pans. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes until done.
She said this also freezes well, and she sometimes makes it in the little individual loaf pans - the recipe fills about 7 of those and she bakes it about 20-25 minutes. Just adjust time for your oven.
Thanks for your kind words and prayers this past weekend. I probably sounded more gloomy than I actually was, although it was weird knowing I was passing that one year milestone. And if I ever get too melancholy, all I have to do is remind myself how often my mom drove me nuts! LOL
God is good. How easily those words roll off believers' tongues, especially when prayers are answered favorably. But how often do we hear someone say "The tumor is malignant. God is good."? Because really, those statements are actually independent of one another. The goodness of God's character is not altered by our circumstances. Yet we do indeed often wrestle with how and why God in His infinite goodness allows so much evil and suffering, especially that which we see on a global scale. Well, let me just throw out a little teaser that I am in the midst of reading Randy Alcorn's about-to-be-released book If God Is Good, and WOW! It is phenomenal. I will be featuring and reviewing it next week. Don't miss it.
And from the sublime to the ridiculous, on the matter of books, I couldn't resist leaving you with this little gem I ran across:
The wife said I'd been tolkien in my sleep.
Have a great Monday!
Rain photo courtesy of stock.xchng
SO glad you are seeing rain. We went through that a few years ago and it is definitely NOT fun!
ReplyDelete"The wife said I been Tolien in my sleep". OUCH!
OK, that was funny!
Linda, how funny that you should make that comment about the "God is good" quote because I spent yesterday pondering the same thought. On another blog someone had written about the defeat of cancer and I was about to type "God is good", then I thought, but had it not been beaten, would I write, "God is bad?"
ReplyDeleteGod IS good. Even when things are bad.
I read Amoeba your Tolkien joke. He let out a horrible groan.
ReplyDeleteHere's another groaner: What's the difference between bird flu and swine flu?
You have to have tweetments to cure bird flu, while you merely need an oinkment for the swine flu.
so will this new random int. widget be as good to me?!!! :)
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to read Randy Alcorn's book. he is one of my favorite author's.
I now must admit that I had to read that last little dittie 3 times before I got it! I think I need one more cup of coffee!
Linda, this is a rare opportunity that blogger is actually letting me comment on your post. I've tried many times to leave you comments, but for some reason the internet or blogger, I don't know, kicks me off your site when I click on "comments"- sometimes I get booted out while I'm reading your posts. WEIRD!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the coffee cake looks delicious! And the new widget looks good.
"Last night, I kept dreaming that I had written Lord of the Rings.
ReplyDeleteThe wife said I'd been tolkien in my sleep." That is too funny! Thanks for the laugh, I needed it today.
I'm here from Quilly's. LOVE that Tolkien pun!!
ReplyDeleteSo agree with your comment's about God's goodness. A few years ago my pastor was almost hit by a car on his way to church, and as he was telling about it, he remarked that God was good to protect him but that God would still have been good even if he had been hit. Though I "knew" that on some level, that's when it really hit me, I think. On our side we look at death as such a tragedy, and having my mom die way too young, it seemed to me, it is hard. Yet from God's viewpoint, when His children die, He's bringing them home to Himself, and what could be greater? That one thought kept me from wishing my mom back (very much, anyway) -- after what I could only imagine she was experiencing I couldn't really wish her back here. I do pray that the rest of the family would come to know Him so we will all be reunited there.
Glad to see it raining your way. Thanks for the widget too. God is good!
ReplyDeleteOH my word. That tolkien in my sleep was bad. Real bad..LOLOLOL
ReplyDelete