The Welds' email box is going to be a bit emptier in the future, following the death of long-time Clarion resident Gene Ballantine. Gene was a great one to pass around emails he enjoyed. Clarion, and all of his email buddies, will miss him!

Something I wrote several days ago. Hope that you enjoy it:

Following the recipe

Today I decided to mix up a favorite recipe of bar cookies. The ingredients included brown sugar. My bag of sugar was starting to get a little hard - good enough to use, but maybe too hard to get an accurate reading in the measuring cup. "I know what a cup of brown sugar looks like," I thought. "I'll just dump it into the bowl without measuring it."

So I started to pour. And the mixer continued to mix. I looked at the bag and the mixture. Now I wasn't sure how much I had put in. That should surely be enough. Well, maybe a little more. But maybe I had put in too much. Boy, I sure hope the cookies turn out okay!

That must be the reason for recipes and measuring cups. Hard to get the right mixture without both.

What about our lives? There is a recipe of God's Words to us, complete with measuring cups of His Love, Grace, and Mercy. He tells us how to go about living our lives so that we are the most happy, complete, and filled with joy.

But many times, we do with our lives what I did with my brown sugar.........dump and mix. Stop and look. Then we aren't sure what we have., what we are doing or where we are going! Well, maybe we should add a bit more of this and that. Maybe a little bit more. Oh, no, maybe I have done too little or too much. Now, what am I going to do?

We need to become empty mixing bowls........ready for God to do the dumping and mixing. He is the only one that knows the recipe for each one of us. He is the one that holds the right-sized measuring utensils. I don't have to worry about Karen Weld being a flop! God's in charge and is the Master Baker to make me turn out just right!

And He has another recipe with your name on it!!