My brother bought a bottle of Irish bailey’s cream, and I had some choco chips lying around… and decided to make some Bailey’s Irish Cream Brownies and they came out pretty good. Here’s the instagram video (click on the link). I’ve been hooked to Instagram since the first time my sister told me about it, in fact…. I waste so much time on instagram nowadays that I don’t have any time to waste on Facebook.
Here are the brownies, with a flaky exterior and a dense chewy interior…. these were quite good, I could get the taste of bailey’s with each bite.
Here’s an article about Easter I wrote for the church magazine…
In case reading the image might be too trying, the text is given below:
I have always wondered why Easter isn’t as big or as exciting as Christmas… I mean who wouldn’t want to celebrate the knowledge that death isn’t the end of everything, that one day we too will be resurrected and live forever in the Father’s Kingdom. It is this knowledge that should shape our lives, if people believed this then they would try to live their temporary lives on this planet in a meaningful way. This last stanza in the song ‘At the cross’ says it all:
And when the earth fades, Falls from my eyes
And You stand before me, I know You love me…
And You stand before me, I know You love me…
Death is not an easy topic to discuss, Ash Wednesday deals with this very aspect of our mortality. Ultimately the world will fade from our eyes and only God knows where we get to spend eternity. Heaven could be here on earth too, when we die we get clothed in God’s grace, and we begin to see the world in a new light. Maybe the ones who have gone ahead are right now living in a parallel universe to us, probably obscured from our worldly senses. Jesus did say He would make all things new (Rev 21:5) and maybe He does appear to each one of us when we die to carry us safely into His divine presence, where we are made new in grace.
Or maybe heaven is somewhere up there enshrouded in the clouds, who really knows… What we do know by faith is that heaven is a place of happiness and peace and true communion with God. This is exactly what everybody unconsciously wants, even if they say otherwise. The familiar saying ‘There are no atheists in fox holes’, sums up man’s attitude towards death. Even atheists can’t help but call out to some higher power in the face of imminent danger. Because of this very uncertain but sure aspect of death, the feast of Easter brings about hope and triumph, it is a celebration of the promise Jesus made in John 14:1-3:
“Do not be worried and upset.” Jesus told them. “Believe in God and believe also in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s house, and I am going to prepare a place for you. I would not tell you this if it were not so. And after I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to myself, so that you will be where I am.”
Easter is a joyous occasion to let go of the past and to live in the present trusting in the Lord to help us through our journey into His kingdom. It is a time to take in the enormity of what Jesus accomplished for us by taking on the mantle of the cross and suffering for our sins so that we may not perish but have eternal live. We are the reason he gave up His life, He gave us all He could give to show us a reason to live. That is what we are called to do, live an extraordinary life in God, empowered by His spirit and nature. The miracle of the empty tomb is the greatest deed that has ever taken place in this world and it will only be surpassed when Our Lord comes again in all His glory to make all things new.
I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will live, even though they die; and all those who live and believe in me will never die. John 11:25-26
Have a blessed and wonderful Easter…. Everybody.
Yes, you are right. Easter is indeed a grand occasion for all of us. It is the time for being redeemed from our curses and sins and start afresh.
Hope you had a lovely one.
Joy always,
Susan
Happy Easter!
Karen the article on Easter is lovely – simple and yet profound!
I want two of those brownies 🙂 next time you make some let me know 🙂
Those brownies look amazing!
I agree with you about Easter. We have celebrated a few Christian Passover meals in recent years – very special.
What a wonderful descriprion of Easter.
thank you so much Karen for the reminder.God is good:)
thank you also for visiting my blog:)
Susan, yeah .. Easter was beautiful this year.
Yummychunklet, same to you…!
Mahesh, will definitely bake some for you…
Karen, 🙂 thanks for dropping by…
Joy, 🙂 thank you…
No offence, Just an outside view from the atheists perspective:
"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here." – Richard Dawkins
We all can make the following claim "Not a single one of your ancestors died young" – Richard Dawkins
and there are more …
If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it any wonder that naïve and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selected for suicide missions?
-Richard Dawkins
More generally it is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims.
There is something dishonestly self-serving in the tactic of claiming that all religious beliefs are outside the domain of science. On the one hand, miracle stories and the promise of life after death are used to impress simple people, win converts, and swell congregations. It is precisely their scientific power that gives these stories their popular appeal. But at the same time it is considered below the belt to subject the same stories to the ordinary rigors of scientific criticism: these are religious matters and therefore outside the domain of science. But you cannot have it both ways. At least, religious theorists and apologists should not be allowed to get away with having it both ways. Unfortunately all too many of us, including nonreligious people, are unaccountably ready to let them.
-Richard Dawkins,
What Carl Sagan the Great Astrophysicist Said about death to his daughter:
http://www.popsci.com/article/science/how-carl-sagan-described-death-his-young-daughter