This week the kids reminded me it was almost the middle of August and we hadn’t been to Ft. Ridgely yet once this summer.
Wow, summer flies!
So we took some relaxing time on Sunday and went to play in the creek that’s a highlight of this local state park.
I always thoroughly enjoy going here. The fresh cool water always takes me back to childhood when we regularly visited my great-uncle’s lake place in northern WI. What a memorable time with family now and in memories past!
What’s in the farm kitchen this week
Have you ever made homemade granola?
It’s actually pretty easy to put together…checking for all the ingredients or shopping for them is the hardest part.
This particular recipe has a base of oatmeal, butter or oil, honey, salt and then you just fill in the rest with whatever you like or have in the house.
Here it is:
Soften 1 cup of butter (I used coconut oil this time), 1 cup of honey and a 1/2 cup of water. Sometimes I’ll add a cup of peanut butter.
In another bowl, pour in 6 cups of oatmeal. Add 1 tsp of salt.
Then mix in together 6 cups of whatever else you want. Here are some suggestions: flour, wheat germ, wheat flakes, sunflower seeds, almonds, shredded coconut, buckwheat groats, flax, any other kind of nuts.
Bake, covered, at 250 for about 2 hours, stirring about every 30 minutes.
We’ve added yogurt and/or fresh strawberries to ours. Yum!
Bible inspiration this week
I have the Bible app on my phone and today’s verse caught my eye.
The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble.
Nahum 1:7
The first thing that caught my eye was that this verse was from Nahum.
I don’t know about you, but Nahum probably isn’t the first book of the Bible I think of when I think of a favorite passage. But this is an especially beautiful one!
(Maybe you even had to stop and think where exactly is Nahum in the Bible?? 😉 )
The other thing that caught my eye was the word “refuge”. I don’t have a complete concordance in front of me, but I wonder how many times the word “refuge” is in the Bible in reference to God being our refuge.
Isn’t it nice to know we can always take comfort in a God who is there for us in tough times?
If you go and look up the 6 verses that come before this one, it’s very interesting!
Sometimes maybe we think of God as a great big teddy bear. Not the case at all. While he is a loving God, he is also just. The sea drying up, he is a whirlwind and a storm, the rocks are shattered before him, etc. All those things show God’s power against the very disrespectful city of Nineveh. God certainly demands respect!
And then come those verses on refuge. Look what Nineveh (and us!) can take comfort in when we put God first and believe in him!
Encouraging you this week to take comfort in the awesome power and refuge of our awesome God.
