wine

The Fourth Day of Advent

Wednesdays are also busy for us between catechesis for Chickadee in the late afternoon and the Advent midweek service at church in the evening, so today was another day for building just one bag of Lego Hogwarts Castle. Bag seven also marked the end of the first of four instruction books, but the Fab Five are certainly not a quarter of the way done with the set yet!

Finally, a red! Tonight’s wine was a Tempranillo from Spain, and I really enjoyed it.

My brooch for the day was a retro Christmas ornament which matches my kitschy Christmas tree print skirts from The Oblong Box Shop.

The Third Day of Advent

Today the children built the sixth bag of the Lego Hogwarts Castle. Tuesdays are a busy for us, because we have choir in the evening, so it makes sense that it was a day to build only a single bag.

Tonight I tried a Rosé Merlot from France…I didn’t even know that was a thing!

And my brooch for today was another Erstwilder piece…a lovely pair of ice skates with baubles that jingle a bit…I’m looking forward to wearing this one all winter long!

The Second Day of Advent

On the second day of Advent, the Fab Five built bags four and five of the Lego Hogwarts Castle set:

Today’s wine was a Sauvignon Blanc from Chilé:

And I wore a Christmas basset hound brooch on a shirt that bears a striking resemblance to a candy cane!

The First Day of Advent

Advent has always been a big deal in our home. Hanging an ornament on the Jesse Tree each day, reading special stories, opening the doors on Lego Advents calendars that don’t always match up with the actual number of days in the season (although this year they do!), lighting an increasing number of candles in the Advent wreath during evening prayers are all things we look forward to. But this year, I added a few extra special things in!

The children are going to build the big Lego Hogwarts Castle throughout the days of Advent this month (to go along with their Lego Harry Potter Advent calendars). I got this idea from a friend last year, and we were able to afford the mammoth set this spring, which I’ve been saving just for this season. They will be building between one and three of the 37 bags each day of Advent (they started with bags one through three today), and the castle will be complete on Christmas Eve. I can’t wait to see it come together!

I also bought Advent calendars from Aldi for Ryan and me this year. Ryan’s is a cheese variety, and I will be trying a new type of wine each night. I haven’t had my own Advent calendar since I was in high school and sold chocolate Advent calendars for German Club! Tonight I enjoyed Rosé-Brut from Spain:

And, as long as I’m keeping a record of our Advent activities this year, I’m also going to track the Christmas brooches I wear. I probably won’t wear one every day, but I intend to wear them as often as possible!

I’m really excited that we have something new to do to help make this season of anticipation extra special this year!

Fundies, Grape Juice, and the 24 Hour Day

I’ve been following a conversation for the last day or two on wine and the Bible. Was wine really consumed in the Bible (especially by Jesus), did Jesus really turn water into wine, or was it just grape juice, is it a sin to drink at all, etc. Some of my more conservative (if that’s possible) Christian sisters are under the impression that it is not OK to drink wine, that, of course, Jesus never would have consumed alcohol, that when wine is referred to in the Bible, it’s actually grape juice, and my personal favorite, and one that I’ve never heard before, wine is a result of sin in the world, because fermentation represents death, ergo, wine is inherently sinful.

With the exception of the last argument, I’ve heard all this stuff before. I don’t agree with it, because it’s my belief that if the Bible says wine, it means wine, and please don’t start spouting off Greek and Hebrew to me. Part of believing in the inerrancy of Scripture is believing that Scripture holds up even through translation. I don’t see any problem with someone having a drink once in a while, (alcoholics and people with medical conditions aside), and I would more than happily share a good bottle of wine with Jesus, so long as it complemented the meal I prepared for Him. Getting drunk is a different story, but to say alcohol is sinful in and of itself is just ridiculous.

Here’s my latest problem with this argument that the Fundies like to pull out, though. These same women will swear up and down that when the Bible says on the first day, on the second day, etc., that it means a 24 hour day. Not 1000 years, not an indeterminate long length of time, not a week or a month or a year. A day, as we know a day to be now. I’m on board with that; agree 100%. The Bible says that God created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh, and as God is the author of the Bible, I believe it. No need to delve into translations, possible other meanings of the word day, blah, blah, blah. The Fundies and I are in agreement! Day=day.

Now lets look at the wine argument. All of the sudden, these women, champions of the inerrancy of Scripture (which again, I totally believe), women who hound more liberal Christians for trying to put too much meaning into one word found in the Bible, and not just taking God’s Word at face value, are all of the sudden chastising everyone for not studying the word wine further. We must, according to them, research other possible meanings of the word wine, the cultural context in which wine was used, the alcohol ratio in wine from Biblical times versus wine of today (how would that even be possible?!?) and on and on. Suddenly, women who have such faith to believe that when the Bible says day it means day, cannot fathom that when the Bible says wine, it means wine. Can anyone say “does not follow?”

I could respect their argument more if they weren’t literalists about everything else (although I still wouldn’t agree with them). If they believed that Scripture could not be taken at face value in general, I would understand where they are coming from. Their passion for the inerrancy of Scripture in every other context, however, makes their inability to accept that wine in the Bible is some kind of fermented beverage (I will grant that as time has passed, it may not be the exact same drink we have today, but still, something generally recognizable) a total and complete contradiction in terms. I can only assume that Fundies like to sap the joy out of every possible thing that they can!