Sweet Treats

 Dear friends, 

Well, we all got thru our Thanksgiving season and I'm guessing that now you're thinking about Christmas! Tony got our Christmas lights up a week early this year, strictly against tradition, but he claimed his authority as Patriarch. But rather than pontificate about Christmas just yet, I'm going to pass this little ditty along just in case you haven’t come across the story and might like to spread some 'Good News' around.  Please enjoy.   

It’s the story of a candy maker in Indiana who wanted to make something that would help us remember Who Christmas is really about.  The result was a Christmas Candy Cane.  He incorporated several symbols for the birth, ministry, and death of Jesus Christ. It goes like this:

He began with a stick of pure white, hard candy. White to symbolise the virgin birth and sinless nature of Jesus.  Hard candy to symbolise the solid rock, the foundation of the Church, and firmness of the promises of God. He then bent it in the form of a “J” to represent the name of Jesus.  It also represented the staff of the “Good Shepherd”. The candy maker then included red stripes, using three small ones and a large red stripe to represent the suffering Christ endured at the end of His life. The candy cane becomes an Instant Evangelising tool! Kids learn things so much better when they are brought to life with a story and visuals!  That’s what makes the Candy Cane Legend so effective in sharing Jesus.

In Japan, after I taught my students about the candy cane, I would have volunteers stand up and retell the story to me – to practice sharing the Gospel as well as their English.  I would then encourage them to get out into the world (their families, their neighbourhoods, their grocery store worker friends, etc.) and share the Good News of the candy cane.

As an extra treat, when you return from your Candy Cane outing, fill up your Happy Buddies’ bellies with this delicious drink… 

Candy Cane Cocoa·      

4 cups milk·      

3 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate, chopped·      

4 peppermint candy canes, crushed·      

1 cup whipped cream·      

4 small peppermint candy canes. 

Writing blogs is hard work; I think I’ll go fix up a batch!

Marsha  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Good News and Salt Licks

 G’day Fellow Travellers, I think many of you might be on Facebook and so noticed the picture I took out the back of our house the other day… seven of the most majestic English-originated Red Deer you ever saw.   It’s a bit of a mystery how they got there, since they are not native to Australia and DEFINITELY not welcome among the country’s flora and fauna. It’s believed they were introduced some time back by a wealthy entrepreneur with plans to start up a new industry. Nobody is saying for sure, but the only thing that can be said is that the deer love it here! I know that the many of you living in Texas and those parts look at deer and think either “menace” or “venison” and perhaps both in the same sentence.  Fortunately for these folks here, although they’re listed as ‘feral’, as they are, everyone treats them like family pets.  Yes, they eat our flowers, but according to the layout of the floodplain we live on, they really can’t get into the traffic, so we a...
Read more

Let It Go

 Hello Again,   I usually don’t like to quote from Facebook, much less recommend it, but today I’m going to do both.   I posted the following on my own FB site and was surprised at the comments that came back. It seems the message here really hits the nail on the head. What do you think? "A Harvard Study of 724 couples Who Made It Past 30 Years Revealed Something Surprising: “It wasn’t love, s*x, or kids that kept them together. It was the ability to tolerate the same things in each other – over and over again. The couples who divorced thought, “This habit drives me crazy, but I can fix it.’ The ones who stayed? ‘This is who they are. They’re not changing.’ Long marriages rarely resolve every conflict. That’s a myth.  Couples who lasted 30+ years didn’t dig into every hurt feeling. They learned to let go. Not suppress – release. ‘You forgot again,’ ‘You said the wrong thing again’ – short-term couples turn that into a fight. Long-term couples let it slide. ...
Read more

Those Pesky Chimeras

 So some people collect stamps; I like to collect words. No one’s ever accused me of being ‘smart’ but sometimes I like to be a “smart aleck” and throw out a word in casual conversation that not many of my cohorts will immediately understand. It’s fun to watch their reactions, like, “Oh! You mean THAT fogdog!” or else, “I think I knew that …” Today’s word is “Chimera”. If you already know what that means, there went my fun for today. You can skip ahead to the application. “Chimera” is a noun that describes something wished for but is either illusory or impossible to achieve. Lately I’ve been painfully aware of two chimeras in my life. One comes to mind when I’m looking back; the other when I’m looking ahead.   Not that I’m counting, but I believe I’ve spent about 80% of my adult life on a diet, on that never-ending search for the perfect body. Now time is teaming up with my best intentions, bringing me one more step toward accepting this as the chimera it is. I’m bracing ...
Read more