souldare

You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
    as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
 You saw me before I was born. (Psalm 139:15-16a NLT)

Every ADVENTure weaves time and expectation together, as we wait, knowing God sees us.

After our first week on the boat, we welcome the sensation of the boat gently rocking, the caws of the seagulls, the daily greetings of the dock hands and the spectacular rising sun.

Les started back to work on Monday, and I frantically began my preparations for Christmas.

One of my favorite traditions is sending boxes of “love” to my family across the miles. I enjoy searching for and finding just the right present for each person. This year I wanted to send something from Florida to give them a taste of our ADVENTure. (I will tell you the story about finding the items after Christmas.)

I welcome challenge of cooking on the boat, so I decided to make some candy and cookies to add to the boxes. Candy making on a boat can be a little treacherous, but the baking went just fine in the toaster oven. Six cookies at a time, but thankfully, I was only baking two dozen.

I gathered all my supplies on the plastic folding table that I borrowed from my mom. I put a towel under the pan for the toffee. I turned on the campstove burner, and melted butter. Added the sugar and stirred. Toffee cooks at a high temperature with 15 minutes of constant stirring.

Everything was sailing along just fine, when the canister of butane began to fizzle out. I was losing heat fast. I turned off the stove, quicky jumped onto the dock to get the new canister from the handy storage bag on the side of the boat, jumped back into the boat, exchanged canisters and started stirring furiously again.

In the meantime, some of the sugary delight had splashed on the burner and was smoking up the place. (Les was working inside the cabin of the boat, and I am yelling “the smoke alarm is going to go off,” as I sprinted to open windows, so that my cooking wouldn’t interrupt his phone meeting. He remained calm and focused on his meeting.) Oh, I forgot to say that I poured the hot liquid into the two waiting pans and had placed the smoking pot on the dock, before I ran to open windows.

Whew! The toffee was saved. But, uh oh! One of the pans didn’t have any towel under it. Sorry, mom, I melted your plastic table. (I will replace it, ok?) Lesson learned: Hot liquids and plastic tables do not go together.

Candy and cookies are wrapped and ready gifts!

It’s fun to laugh at myself. I have been mulling over this verse: “You have searched me, O Lord, and you know me.” How well He does know me! And you’ll see this truth, when I tell you about the shopping ADVENTure.

But enough about me. Mary and Elizabeth are waiting for us to get back to them.

As Mary and Elizabeth waited for their sons to be born, I wonder if they mulled over the words of Psalm 139. Were they thinking of their own formation in the womb or were they thinking about their child? It never occured to me that the promises of Psalm 139, not only applied to the Israelites and current believers, but they also related to baby Jesus.

God the Father, was watching Jesus being formed in Mary’s womb.

What does it mean to you that God saw Jesus being formed?

What does it mean to you that God knew you before you were born?

Sighted this week: