Called to Freedom, Called to Serve (Prayer Devotional for the week of April 28, 2013)

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Do you ever wish you could just hit the Pause button on life and catch your breath? Between the bombing in Boston, the explosion in West and the shooting in Robinson, my heart is heavy this week. And yet, there are still end-of-semester deadlines at school, fiscal year-end deadlines at work, field trip forms to sign, overdue library books to locate, laundry to fold, dishes to wash, and the gas tank just dinged “Empty.” The world doesn’t slow down just because I need a breather, so sometimes, I have to carve out time and allow myself to refocus – emotionally, physically and even spiritually.

We’ve been talking the past few weeks about our purpose and calling in life. I used to have my life all planned out, ya know. I was going to marry that cute boy from middle school, live in a mansion with its own library (and a ladder on wheels), have two boys and two girls (so they wouldn’t fight, because my children were going to be perfectly behaved) and travel the world in my free time. Once I realized that those dreams were, perhaps, a wee bit unrealistic, I decided that I would be a foreign missionary (at least I could do the travel-the-world part of my plan, and it seemed less materialistic than living in a mansion).

Yet, here am I today, just about as clueless as I was back then. As I try to figure out my place in God’s plan, I am driven by passages of Scripture like Galatians 5:13-18:

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom … My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness (MSG).

We can only function for so long in “survival mode.” If you are like me and need a breather from all the stress around us these days, I encourage you to put Galatians 5 in action: find ways to serve and reach out to others who are hurting. It’s amazing what such acts of kindness will do for your own burdened heart.

Dulce y caliente salsa verde recipe

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Last week, my 12yo offered to help me make a batch of salsa verde for a fundraiser contest. It was a fundraiser for scholarships, and I signed up to participate long before I realized that it would fall on the same week that I would be trying to finish a research paper (not to mention shortly after the attack at the Boston Marathon, the explosion in West, Texas and a shooting in a neighboring town that was too close to home, among myriad other stress-factors this week, which is why I’m just now getting around to posting the recipe).

salsa verde

We saved & dried several poblano and tomatillo seeds for our garden.

We came up with a recipe that is a little sweet at first and then finishes with a slow burn. I would gauge it about a “Medium” on the salsa heat-index. 🙂 What a wonderful surprise to find out that our salsa raised ~$170 for scholarships and won the contest!!

I promised folks that I would share the recipe after I finished my paper … Hallelujah, I turned it in this morning! Woohoo! My semester is officially finished, which means that I have only ONE more “real” class to take this summer before beginning my dissertation in earnest this coming fall. I’m so excited that I can hardly think straight … or perhaps that’s the exhaustion. Whatever.

Without further ado, here’s the experimental recipe that my sous chef and I concocted:

Ingredients

  • 10-12 tomatillos: stems removed & cut into quarters (we also scraped off some seeds to save & plant); peel off the papery shell but leave the skin
  • 1 poblano pepper: stems removed, seeded & quartered lengthwise
  • 1 sweet onion (will give a distinctive sweet taste … if you prefer an uber-hot salsa, you could sub regular yellow or white onion and experiment)
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil
  • 3-4 pinches of cilantro (I’m not a big fan of cilantro, so we didn’t use a whole lot, maybe 1/4 of the bunch)
  • 1/2 cup white vinegar
  • Sriracha sauce (or Cholula sauce would also be quite yummy, but we happened to have Sriracha on hand)
  • 1 lime (or juice equivalent to 1/4 of a lime)

Blanch the tomatillos until they feel a bit soft when poked with a fork, but while the water is heating up, you can take care of the onions and poblano. Cut the onion into slivers and saute in olive oil until it starts to caramelize. In the meantime, put the poblano on a baking sheet and broil at 450 for about 3-4 min, until the skin starts to blacken — keep an eye on it, so it doesn’t burn.

Drain the tomatillos. Put the cilantro, tomatillos, poblano & onion in a blender with vinegar. Blend (we used the “mince” and “grind” settings) until well mixed. Squeeze juice from 1/4 of a lime (watch for seeds) & pulse to blend. Add 3-4 squirts of Sriracha sauce (to taste) &  pulse to blend.

Our batch made about 1 qt. Depending on the size of your tomatillos and onion, you may end up with a little more or less.

Enjoy! 🙂