This Friday the 5th come to the Historic Murdock Theatre at 7 pm for Oklahoma Shakedown, a film by Taylor Mullins.

Want to shop for quality items at wonderful prices and support a local organization at the same time? Come to Dress for Success‘s Clothing Sale. Beginning today from 5 til 9, come to New Market Square for first dibs on items, light appetizers, and music. VIP tickets are $10 online here or $15 at the door. Then Saturday and Sunday enjoy free general admission. This group not only provides women with interview-quality wardrobes, they offer networking and career coaching for low-income women.

Saturday from 11-3, Green Acres at Bradley Fair is hosting their Customer Appreciation Party. Enjoy discounts and goodies while you shop.

The Sedgwick County Extension Office is hosting a workshop this Saturday the 6th to help anyone interested in learning how to be a better farmers’ market vendor or produce grower. Register here.

Watermark Books is hosting Melanie Benjamin for a reading and signing of her book The Swans of Fifth Avenue.

Wichita Symphony is presenting Dancing and Romancing this Saturday the 6th at Century II. Savor the sights and sounds of Broadway veterans Joan Hess and Kirby Ward. “The Symphony meets the Ballroom.” Tickets here.

Library:

Central is hosting a panel discussion  with local film makers Saturday 2-4 on film making in Kansas.

Sunday at Alford from 2:30 – 3:30 you can bring the whole family to a Mardi Gras celebration.

Monday from 1-6 you can stop by Linwood Branch and turn paper plates into necklaces based on the creations of the Samburu tribe. Children 4-10 can drop in.

Tuesday at Evergreen, children ages 3 and up can learn about what body parts do with their families for Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes 6:30-7:30 pm.

Come to Rockwell Tuesday from 6:30-7:30 pm to learn how to reduce Home Energy Consumption.

Next week is 2nd Wednesday which means: Adult Coloring at Westlink. Materials and beverages provided.

Senior Wednesday is at Central from 1:30 – 2:30. You can learn about the history of our local NPR station, KMUW.

Have a great weekend!

Another sweet new friend

Joy

Compost bin improvement

Ninja Birthday Party

Got to peruse during the party

Bookaholic is joining the Blind Book Date movement

My childhood

Warmth

Glory

Your 7 Days?

Today I’m linking up with Modern Mrs Darcy for her What’s Saving My Life Right Now post.

Things making me happy this winter…

Morning routine. God’s Word, good coffee, and the softest blanket ever. {Fun side note on that mug: our small group leader had everyone bring one with their initial on it to our Christmas party. Whoever’s gift we ended up with in the White Elephant swap, we also got the mug with their initial. And we pray for that person each morning. Love.}

Kitchen Time:

My boys have been helping with dinner often lately. When they’re not interested, I’ve been putting on Pandora Dinner Party Station or Vince Guaraldi Radio or Podcasts and enjoying the opportunity to make soups, chili, and skillet goodness.

Green Smoothies pretty much daily. I truly can tell the extra vitamins are helping with energy.

Herbal tea. It’s a new staple since I relied on it for 30 days for after-dinner sweet tooth issues.

This selection was at Le Monde.

Family Stuff:

Containing the compost

I’m grateful one of my hub’s top love languages is acts of service. He regularly builds me a crackling fire in the evenings, which happens to be my winter love language.

Enjoying any sunny days we get – including walks to the river and park play dates and spontaneous hang outs and neighborhood bike rides.

Met this beauty and her owner the other afternoon on a river walk

Board Games. Youngest and I often enjoy a game of Slap Jack or Memory or Sequence in the morning together. And games are one of our family’s favorite ways to hang in the evening.

Wisdom and Self-Care:

A Facebook friend posted her mom’s simple but profound quote the other day: “Never trust your feelings in January.” Amen.

Praying for and serving other people. Along with looking for ways to be grateful, these two things are the best way to get outside myself.

This article Jen Hatmaker posted on Facebook. Been rolling around in my brain, but don’t have any completely processed thoughts about it yet. You?

The YMCA – for everything from walking dates with friends to the classes I get to teach to the people I love to run into to family swims to the chance to get some work done. The Y blesses our family in so many ways.

The Library. For good books, kid DVDs, and another place to get some work done. Love, love the library.

Reading a little before bed most evenings. The 2016 Reading Challenge is helping me think more creatively about what to pick up next. And it’s helped me get out of the reading slump I’ve been in lately.

Creating – Experimenting more with photography, buying my first oil-based Sharpie and whipping up a mug, using some frames we were given to put some of the boys’ artwork in, and thinking through ways to incorporate old photos into decorating. I like it.

I’ll end the same way I did last year: my Jesus, my family, and my community are my heart. I’m so grateful.

What’s making YOU happy this winter? I’d love to hear.

{Thanks, Anne, for the great Winter Halftime share.}

{Heads up: A few affiliate links in this post}

Our exiles’ answer has been presented to the king and he has responded. Let’s hear the rest of the king’s reply:

“Moreover, I hereby decree what you are to do for these elders of the Jews in the construction of the house of God:

The expenses of these men are to be fully paid out of the royal treasury, from the revenues of Trans-Euphrates, so that the work will not stop. Whatever is needed – young bulls, rams, male lambs for burnt offerings to the God of heaven, and wheat, salt, wine and oil, as requested by the priests in Jerusalem – must be given them daily without fail, so that they may offer sacrifices pleasing to the God of heaven and pray for the well-being of the king and his sons.

Furthermore, I decree that if anyone changes this edict, a beam is to be pulled from his house and he is to be lifted up and impaled on it. And for this crime his house is to be made a pile of rubble. May God, who has caused his Name to dwell there, overthrow any king or people who lifts a hand to change this decree or to destroy this temple in Jerusalem.

I Darius have decreed it. Let it be carried out with diligence.”

(Ezra 6:8-12)

Well, the king means business.

I like the “so that” in verse 10: “so that they may offer sacrifices pleasing to the God of heaven and pray for the well-being of the king and his sons.” It is very likely the king is like most at the time who worship many gods and is hoping to appease the Jewish God as well.

But what if? What if the God of Jerusalem had captured King Darius? What if he had heard stories of this God of heaven, who has caused his Name to dwell there?

After all, how do you get passion for something? Isn’t it usually when you have a deep need and that something fills it?

Our church is in Psalms and our pastor has been talking about how every person on this planet, every day, is becoming a better worshiper of something. What we pursue with our thoughts and time and money and investment, we move toward worshiping more thoroughly.

This is good news if the object of your worship is worthy of such devotion. And if that object is the God Who made everything out of nothing, sustains it all by His very Word, and will redeem every part of it for His glory one day and for all eternity, you have found what is worthy.

But you know what’s hard? When that thing you know in your head is not worthy of your worship is still a struggle. If you want that next drink more than life itself. If the effort to pull yourself out of bed is too much because the depression has you paralyzed. If the fire-searing pain of betrayal is more real than love or forgiveness.

In those moments we need others who have been there. To testify He came through in that moment when your prayers were just a whispered, “help.” When you walked through the fire and He didn’t let you burn. We need those who will show us that any other thing in this world will fail us – must fail us – but He hasn’t for one second let you down.

Then we’re all ears. Then we can find the courage to choose. To confess in this moment He is not supreme, but we want to want Him to be. That we’re weak and poor in spirit and have nothing to offer.

That’s exactly the kind of person who can use a Savior.

And thank the good goodness we have One.

And He provides the strength to help us move toward Him. To intentionally choose to turn our affections to Him and the Truth of His Word and ask Him to help us overcome. To do the right thing until we feel the right thing.

And to ask Him to become the all-consuming passion of our hearts.

It is Final Friday time. Support local artists and enjoy exploring our venues.

A friend recently visited the Kansas Firefighters Museum with her little one and said it was a pleasure. The workers gave them a guided tour and were so kind.

Did you know about the KPTS Store in the Spice Merchant? They offer books and videos, all proceeds going to support public television.

WSU’s Ulrich Museum of Art is hosting a free event this evening beginning at 5:30: Artist Talk: Radcliffe “Ruddy” Rowe. This documentary photographer hopes to change the conversation surrounding race, poverty and identity.

Watermark is hosting a book signing this Saturday at 2:00 with Chris Bertogolio’s release The Vanishing Cowboy.

Did you know we are in the last four days of Wichita Restaurant Week? Each participating restaurant boasts their own special menu and price, donating 10% to the Boys and Girls Club. Plus: it showcases our local eateries, including River City Brewing Co., Molino’s Mexican Cuisine, Delano Barbecue Co., and Cafe Bel Ami.

Library:

Tonight come to Westlink at 6:30 for Family Fun: Pajama Party.

Friday the 29th, head to Rockwell Branch for The Very Hungry Caterpillar event.

Saturday from 2-4 you can head to Central to learn how to make movies with your smart phone.

And at 2:30 on Saturday you can come to Evergreen Branch for a Frozen Party.

On Tuesday, February 2nd, head to Alford at 2:30 for Mermaids and Silly Fish.

And did you know at Alford on Wednesdays from 10-Noon you can join others learning to knit, crochet, or quilt? Beginners and experienced alike are welcome.

And don’t forget all the different branches’ Storytimes.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Healthy cart at Costco

Making a mug for small group and enjoying a new tea

Making good use of the icy patio – hockey before school

New favorite artwork – boys’ projects from a friend’s church’s VBS last summer

(Mini) Etch-a-Sketch love

Good chili weather

Homework

Finally read it and officially in love

Get Dad

Your 7 Days?

If we were sitting across from each other at my kitchen table, it would be different.

I would tell you all the things I won’t put in a blog post about this food challenge. Some personal reasons I’ve never felt better. The way body image and food are such charged topics and the messy history I have with both. How truly scary it is to lose weight and hope it doesn’t also mean losing friends or respect or trust.

We would talk about how messed up our culture is on the subject of eating and diets and beauty. How easy it is to stress eat and how bonding it is to talk about ways we’ve blown it. But how gluttony is still not okay with God. I would ask you questions about ways you use food or clothes or humor to hide. Ways it feels scary to change or go against the tide or join the tide if it’s healthier and more God honoring than ignoring it.

We would likely share some pain. How we’ve been wounded around this subject. Not because anyone else is in charge of our heart but because we are part of the human race and we aren’t always careful with each other’s sorrow. We’d probably talk about how much we don’t want to compete or compare, no matter how much our culture encourages it. Because no one gets anywhere like that.

I would try to hold your truth carefully. I think you would with mine, too. Because we all have something. A place we struggle and a past that visits. He designed it that way, we’d remind ourselves. So we learn to cling to Him.

Yeah, it’s about more than food. And it’d be different if we were face to face.

“King Darius then issued an order, and they searched in the archives stored in the treasury at Babylon. A scroll was found in the citadel of Ecbatana in the province of Media, and this was written on it:

‘Memorandum:

In the first year of King Cyrus, the king issued a decree concerning the temple of God in Jerusalem:

Let the temple be rebuilt as a place to present sacrifices, and let its foundations be laid. It is to be ninety feet high and ninety feet wide, with three courses of large stones and one of timbers. The costs are to be paid by the royal treasury. Also, the gold and silver articles of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took from the temple in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon, are to be returned to their places in the temple in Jerusalem; they are to be deposited in the house of God.’

Now then, Tattenai, governor of Trans-Euphrates, and Shethar-Bozenai and you, their fellow officials of that province, stay away from there. Do not interfere with the work on this temple of God. Let the governor of the Jews and the Jewish elders rebuild this house of God on its site.”

The King has more to say, but that’s quite a bit to digest already.

I appreciate how anyone not interested in joining what God is doing should not interfere. But my favorite part of these verses is how it specifies this was a decree “concerning the temple of God in Jerusalem.”

Ultimately, all this was about His Presence and Glory among His people, displayed in the sight of the nations. Oh, He cares deeply about each person involved. He’s so expansive, and His love is no less abounding.

But those watching need to know His worth.

In Joshua 5:13-14, Joshua is nearing Jericho and has been commanded to take the city. Suddenly “he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked,

‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’

‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.’

Something I heard at a conference about this passage has stuck with me:

I did not come to take sides. I came to take over.

Does King Darius now wonder about this God in Jerusalem? What are the Trans-Euphrates officials thinking? They will likely be around as the rebuild continues. Will they see a God worthy of the effort as they watch from a distance?

Only Yahweh can command praise and it end up being for the ultimate benefit of everyone. When He takes over, taking sides seems pretty useless.

So how about us? As we walk with Him, find Him so utterly trustworthy, and surrender even more to Him, everyone around us benefits. We’re so caught up in stewarding what Peter calls His grace in its various forms that we see little need to compare and compete. Sides become obsolete.

And we show a watching world this God of Angel Armies Who makes all our challenges, every bit of sacrifice, worth it.

If you read nothing else, read this:

ICT S.O.S. and the Exploited and Missing Child Unit is hosting Chris Baker, of Ink 180 fame, for a human trafficking awareness event. Along with screening this Emmy-winning documentary, a panel of local experts will be discussing this topic of modern-day slavery. If you’ve been hearing about this issue and wonder why Wichita is a prime location for trafficking, this event is for you. Come to Grace Point Church at 9035 W Central tomorrow night, January 22nd, at 6:00 pm.

Our friend, Jamin Still, will be be hosting a reading of his new book Ellen and the Winter Wolves this Saturday at River Community Church from 4-6 pm. This charming book, written and illustrated by Jamin, needs to be on your coffee table.

Also on January 23rd, head to our friends’ College Hill DQ to celebrate Fan Appreciation Day. Discounts include 1/2 off cakes and novelties.

Come to Watermark on Tuesday the 26th for a reading and signing of West of Sunset by Steward O’Nan. Event begins at 6:00 pm.

On Saturday, January 23, Fisch Haus will host an event After Words: art + poetry. Readings will be by Elizabeth Schultz & Catherine Anderson, and Rachel Epp Buller will be available to discuss her art on display.

Library:

If you need help registering to vote, come today any time from 2 – 7:30 to Central.

Also at Central, come Saturday the 23rd for a workshop on starting your own business. Register here.

From 2-4 at Central on Saturday, come for the In Our Own Voice: National Alliance on Mental Illness presentation. Two speakers will share their stories and roads to recovery.

Saturday from 2-4 at Westlink, enjoy a LEGO block challenge and make your own creations with friends.

On Sunday from 2:30-3:30, ages 12-17 can make a cozy fleece scarf at Alford. Love these scarves.

If you or someone you know needs help enrolling in health insurance, helpers will be available to assist at Central on Monday the 25th from 11-2.

Come to Linwood Monday at 6 pm to hear Circus Stories.

Then Tuesday, join others at Central to hear about the topic of Human Trafficking, beginning at 11:30 with your brown bag lunch (drinks provided).

Have a lovely weekend!

I know I already mentioned this, but When Pigs Fly was incredible. They can cater any menu you want – not just BBQ – and offer large portion sizes. Plus, they were so kind.

Fajita fixins

When one has to make a diaroma for school, both make one.

Reading our morning devotional

Listening to morning devos

Snuggles

Your 7 Days?

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