Wedding Bliss. Except not at all. August 26, 2008

An update:

 

I hate wedding planning.  Hate hate hate it.  I don’t want a wedding.  I think it’s stupid that I feel obligated to have one.  I’m out of ideas and I’m out of caring.  I don’t know why Craig and I don’t just elope.  That would be so much easier. 

 

I have to find a florist soon (do I have to?  Has anyone out there done DIY flowers…is it hard?  Is anyone willing to assist me if I choose that route instead?), and someone to make the stupid cake that we’ll spend tons of money on and probably no one will even like.  I’ve never had wedding cake that I thought tasted worthwhile.  And so I contacted someone that bakes cakes and they want a detailed description of what I want it to look like.  Nothing in the title “Product Support Engineer” gives any hint of an idea that I know how to design a wedding cake.  I am not that girl.  So let me throw this out there to my audience for a poll or open suggestion item…how does a dummy cake sound?  We’re having a dessert buffet at the reception…in other words, fruit trays galore and brownies, lemon bars, cake etc.  What if I just get the fancy cake made with only 2 real layers (the top for Craig and I to eat on our 1 year and one other layer for us to cut that night to feed each other with) and the rest just get Styrofoam with fondant or other icing over it.  I found a bakery that does that.  Then we can just order tons of good cake from Sams club and have it pre sliced to cut out all the mess.  And it would be a LOT cheaper.  And with a guest list of over 350 now, I’m looking for ways to cut corners here.  Also, our color is Tiffany Blue and in the ceremony we’re carrying white tulips but at the reception hall I’m going to have centerpieces of multi colored tulips…so if you have ideas for a cake that would work with this theme let me know. 

 

Also, as far as centerpieces go….I’ve found plenty of blue mason jars to use as vases for the tulips at the reception.  Let me get some input from those of you that decorate on a more regular basis than I do…will a mason jar with 6-10 tulips in it, sitting on a square mirror with petals dropped around it and maybe some smaller mason jars with tealights in them be enough on the table?  Are you catching what I’m throwing?  I was thinking for the lighted masons we could just tie ribbons around the rim to pull together the color theme. 

 

If any of you ladies out there would like to help me with this please feel free to give me a call and force me to go do wedding stuff.  Because frankly I’m getting to the point where I’m having a hard time motivating myself because I think it’s all completely stupid.  I can’t believe we do things like this when there are starving children in the world.  It makes me a little sick to my stomach to think about it.

Lampstands August 1, 2008

Last night in Gilbert’s class we talked about the letter to the church at Ephesus in Revelation chapter 2.  This lead to a discussion about how the church at Ephesus had probably gotten so caught up in identifying false teachers that it was missing out on the whole loving people thing.  They forgot that they were supposed to be showing people Christ through their faith and their works and how those two things are not mutually exclusive. 

 

This made me think about churches that “die off.”  The people get old, and literally die off, because they haven’t brought anyone to Christ to keep the congregation flourishing.  In my experience when this happens many times the scripture “wide is the path that leads to destruction” is quoted and taken completely out of context.  “Well, it’s not that we weren’t going out and trying to make disciples of all nations, it’s just that no one wanted to listen to the good news we had to share” 

 

While we are to expect that to be the case on occasion (not everyone is going to obey the gospel) I am wondering now if what has happened in many of these congregations is not that they haven’t tried, but perhaps they left the love out of their efforts as it seems Ephesus may have done.  And sometimes are so downright angry about their faith that the “good news” doesn’t sound so good at all.  Christ says at the end of the letter that he would remove the lamp stand if they didn’t go back to their first love and way of doing things…perhaps that is what is happened to these congregations.  I think sometimes we take the written word of God to the world but forget to take the actual Word of God to the world.  Does this make sense?