Easter and thoughts...

Happy Easter!!!

What really stuck out to me this year in the Easter story, was in John 20, how Jesus chose to first reveal himself to Mary Magdeline, a (former) prostitute, and I love the intimate way she recogonized him not by his look, she thought he was the gardiner, but by the way he called her name..."Mary." The word says how he calls his own by name in John 10; How there are days that I wish in the stillness of my heart to hear my name too... "Misha." I am sure there are times he is calling out to me but I am just not listening...maybe like Mary I too need to be looking for him..as Paul writes..."Fix our eyes on the author and perfector of our faith."

Anyhow that part of the story touched me this year...and I was able to read it to some new friends who we brought Easter lunch to, and I think they too saw a glimpse of the deep love that God has for us individually.

So we had a different yet great Easter, it started with going to church with new friends, and how I love corporate worship; I love singing and praising the Lord with hundereds of others who love Him. Then we brought food to some friends, which was special. Then we met some friends for a late dessert...there is a group of us who have spent every holiday together (except Christmas, we are all usually home then) for the past year...so it was nice to end the night with them.

Oh and I made my first cake for Easter, it was a small goal of mine. Here in New York bakeries are everywhere and I hadn't thought of myself as a baker until recently-I have started baking for friends weekly-and every time that I pass those windows full of big cakes flowing with waves of white frosting on sweet cake plates I think "I want to do that." It seems so warm and inviting and old fashioned, to make a home made cake and have it resting on a cake plate ready for family and friends to partake of its goodness...anyhow so I made a carrot cake! It was amazing..though I have to work on the presentation...my frosting wasn't flowing across the cake as beautifully as I had imagined it would but hey it was my first time..and everyone loved it so in short success!

Oh and on another note last week Mike and I went to the Bronx Botanical Gardens for a "hike". There is an area of "natural forest" there, it is beautiful but funny that our hikes are now on a few acres of city land, anyhow we saw an old man feeding birds...he would hold out peanuts, and birds from the wild would come and pirch on his hand, of course I wanted to get in on this experience and prompted by Mike I began talking with this bird feeder and he proceeded to give me a few peanuts and showed me how to get the bird's attention...so there I was slowly waving my hand to these chirping creatures hiding in there trees and after a few false alarms, a sweet little bird pirched on my hand. I thought he would immediately take the food from my hand but he just stood there investigating me, looking at me in the face checking me out for a moment...it was a very special experience..I will post pics soon.