Advent 7- Speckled Lambs

December 3
Speckled Lambs

Read Genesis 31:10 –13

The story of Jacob’s dispute with Laban over wages is told beginning in Genesis 30:29. In this story of two men each trying to outwit the other we can see a promise of God’s accepting the spotted (read sinful) children of earth as his own and rescuing them. The following poem tells the same story. Sing it to the tune of the spiritual, ‘When Israel Was in Egypt’s Land’.

© Natalie Grace

For the Family:

The symbol is a speckled lamb, placed beneath the cross. Write your own name on the back of the speckled lamb. Make an ornament for each member of the family. Hang the symbol on your Tree of Promise and give thanks that you have been chosen by God

 while you were still in your sin.

Remember the cotton ball lambs you made in Sunday School? If you have young children you can let them make one only they should leave some spots without cotton and color those spots brown. They can hang them on the tree and say that God chose them even though they were not perfect. 

Bible Journaling: 

                             Advent 7-Speckled Lambs
                                                 Genesis 31:10-13
                                                Connie Denninger

                               From the Kitchen:

Decorated roll out cookies work well here.

If you want another cookie, 

I think chocolate chip cookies are speckled cookies.

Chocolate Chip – Oatmeal Cookies

 Dora Pfitzer Meyermann- Mother of Natalie Hartwig

Sift together:

• 1 ½ cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt

Cream:

• 1 cup shortening
• ¾ cup brown sugar, packed
• ¾ cup granulated sugar

Add dry ingredients to creamed ingredients and then add:

• 2 unbeaten eggs
• 1 tsp hot water
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups oatmeal
• 1 box chocolate chips or 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup nuts

Makes about 100 cookies. Bake at 350.

That’s the extent of my mom’s recipe. I interpret a “box” of chocolate chips to mean 16 oz. In my oven each pan of cookies takes about 12 – 15 minutes. When she made the cookies with raisins instead of chocolate chips she called them Depression Cookies. In her retirement years she kept these cookies in the freezer and all the grandchildren would collect a hug from her and then head straight for the basement freezer. As adults, with children of their own, they still think that chocolate chip cookies belong in the freezer. 

The cooks at Trinity Lutheran School, Red Bud, IL, made a similar cookie with M & Ms instead of chocolate chips. They got tired of hearing the students quarrel over who had the most candies in their cookies so they began making the dough without candies, scooping out the cookies, and then putting 3 candies on each cookie. The kids renamed the cookies 3 Chip Cookies.

Natalie Grace Hartwig

Tree of Promise advent Devotions