Snow Days, Chocolate Cake, and Living in Community

Hey, remember February of 2011 when Dallas froze over and everyone was stuck at home for a week? Yea, that was crazy. Five snow days in two weeks! In theory, it was awesome. In practice, a little hard to recover from, at least as far as work is concerned. But, pressing on... more rambling after the jump.


I baked a cake for my Growth Group for Valentine's Day. An epic cake, in fact. With 14 layers of yellow sponge cake and chocolate ganache, frosted with dark chocolate buttercream, standing at six inches tall, taking about 6 man-hours of prep... it was definitely a labor of love! But our GG is definitely worth it - what a great crew of folks! We've really settled in this year, for the first time in a while. We're having some really interesting conversations this semester as we work our way through The Story. Tonight, we talked on many things, including the story of Ruth. I've always known the story pretty well (since it is in my name, after all), but I guess I've never thought too deeply about Ruth's reasons for staying with Naomi or the significance of her story in light of the Story, other than being in the lineage of Jesus. Really want to pull a few commentaries and see what else I can find there.

However, the thing that hit me the most tonight was our discussion on living in community while still being connected to (and actively listening to) God, and what that looks like in our modern age. I know for me, I tend to fall into a pattern of doing things for my community but not always doing a great job of really connecting with those around me. Definitely something I'd like to work on, particularly in light of my pending career change. There is definitely a lot to be said for taking care of the physical needs of those around me -- however, it really needs to be deeper than that. I want to be aware of God working in other people, both through me and through their own circumstances. That, of course, requires me to be more aware of God in general which requires me to stop and just listen. All the busyness in the world, even if it's for good or even Godly things, does us no good if we can't take the time to listen to what God has to say.

So. There. Some food for thought as we move past Monday to the rest of week. I hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day!