I was weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when I heard the voice of children from a neighboring house chanting, “Take up and read; take up and read.” I could not remember ever having heard the like, so checking the torrent of my tears, I arose, interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book and read the first chapter I should find. Eagerly then I returned to the place where I had laid the volume of the apostle. I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: “Not in revelry and drunkenness, not in licentiousness and lewdness, not is strife and envy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.” No further would I read, nor did I need to. For instantly at the end of this sentence, it seemed as if a light of serenity infused into my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished away.

Augustine

CATEGORY	CUISINE	TAG	YIELD
Eggs, Dairy		Breads, Breakfast	12	Muffins

INGREDIENTS

2	c	Flour, self-rising
2	tb	Sugar
1		Egg; beaten
1	c	Milk
3	tb	Shortening; melted (or oil)
1	tb	Orange rind; grated
24		Mandarin orange sections; drained

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine flour and sugar in a large mixing bowl.  Blend together egg, milk,
shortening, and orange rind.  Add liquid all at once to flour mixture,
stirring only until flour is moistened. Fill greased muffin pans 2/3 full.
Place 2 orange sections on each muffin in opposite directions to form a
butterfly.  Bake at 425 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.
SOURCE: Southern Living Magazine, sometime in 1972.
From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini

A Message from our Provider:

“If God were an impersonal force we’d be superior to our Maker”

There is a vast difference between such an affection and that selfish and unhallowed friendship to God which terminates on our own happiness as its supreme motive and end. If a man in his supposed love to God has no ultimate regard except to his own happiness, if he delights in God not for what He is but for what He is to him, in such a sentiment there is no moral virtue. There is indeed great love of self but no true love of God. But where the enmity of the carnal mind is slain, the soul is reconciled to the divine character as it is. God Himself in the fullness of His manifested glory becomes the object of devout and delighted contemplation. In his more favored hours, the views of a good man are in a great measure diverted from himself. As his thoughts glance toward the varied excellence of the deity, he scarcely stops to inquire whether the being whose character fills his mind and in comparison of whose dignity and beauty all things are atoms and vanity will extend his mercy to him. His soul cleaves to God and in the warmth and fervor of devout affection, he can often say, “Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none on the earth that I desire beside Thee, as the hart pants after the waterbrooks, so pants my soul after Thee, O God.”

Gardiner Spring