bierkergaard

Luke 10:40 But Martha was cumbered about much serving; and she came up to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister did leave me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. John 12:2 So they made him a supper there: and Martha served; but Lazarus was one of them that sat at meat with him. Let's use the word cumbered tomorrow during our Thanksgiving festivities. Let's! Man, I could lick the screen that Turkey looks so good! These two verses fascinate me and show a maturity in Martha...from a one who is cranky to one who serves willingly and joyfully. Like a raw turkey that has been cooked to maturity. Although biblical timelines are often hard to nail down, the story retold in John 12:2 is clearly later. It is post raising Lazarus from the dead, and Jesus is soon to go to the Cross. Martha serves without a peep of complaining. In the first verse, I could hear her squawk, "Hey, the blankety-blank Butterball ain't going to ...

Friends gave me an iron skillet. It reminds me of the one we had as kids. Could knock out a charging Great Dane with one swing. For several years, I used non-stick Teflon pans. Then, thought better of it. Who knows what they were leaching. Then, I used a steel pan with Pam spray but then considered that I was probably ingesting whatever caused food not to stick on the pan. It was some nasty sounding compound. Not food-based. So, I made a full circle back to the skillet. Now, I used butter or olive oil to grease the pan down. A particularly cool feature about an iron skillet is that the whole pan gets hot when it sits on the stove. The thing conducts heat very efficiently. One of the features of it getting hot, is that it kills the microbes that might be lurking in the pan so it is not necessary to wash the pan after every use. Just wipe it clean and let it sit on the burner for a good thirty seconds on high before cooking the next dish and bug...

I know that I am probably the 5000th person who draws a parallel between King David and former CIA Director/Decorated US General David Petraeus. A moment of temptation becomes a millennium or more of regret. We can trace Israel's current troubles to the split in the Davidic reign when he glanced at Bathsheba and pursued her rather than averting his eyes. Adultery and murder followed, and the sword has not departed from the house. According to news accounts, Petraeus and his biographer mistress--another Army veteran--bonded over running along the Potomac. Maybe it started innocently. The title of the book, "All In" certain has a salacious and suggestive and Freudian-like double-entendre meaning in retrospect. I have to imagine one of the first lessons the military imparts to recruits is that letting your guard down is dangerous. When I worked with juvenile offenders--in a system that had a military-like discipline and code--a key principle of mai...