Posted in Faith, tagged 22 Words, Abraham Piper, Bible, BibleGateway.com, Christianity, cross, disciples, Easter, faith, gospels, graphics, harmonisation, Holy Week, Holy Week timeline, illustration, Jesus, openbible.info, picture, resurrection, visual, visualisation on 20 April, 2011| 3 Comments »
I’m sure a bunch of you have already seen this around the blogosphere, but I only spotted it yesterday. It’s a really cool picture of where everyone was in Holy Week – Jesus, the disciples, the Jewish leaders, the crowds, the guards etc. Am wondering how to get this printed out much bigger – A0 would be cool.
BibleGateway, who published it, have more details, as do openbible, who designed it.
[HT Abraham Piper, as usual]
Posted in Craft, Faith, tagged activity, Bible, Craft, crucifixion, Easter, eggs, Jesus, Kids, plastic eggs, resurrection, Resurrection Eggs, teaching, The Works on 8 April, 2011| 8 Comments »
Last year I made a set of Resurrection eggs to talk the kids through the Easter story over 12 days leading up to Easter Sunday. Actually, last year, I started rather late, so it went on post-Easter too.
After Easter I discovered that they sell empty plastic eggs in The Works – those shops seem to be nearly everywhere. Much easier than sending off to Baker Ross. So you could pop out this weekend and sort out a set. I was thinking that making a set would be a fun activity for the holidays. We’ll dig out our set from the cellar and maybe tweak the contents a bit.
Just to save you clicking through, here are the readings and fillings from the original post.
Day 1: Cottonwool ball soaked in perfume (not sure how authentic Elizabeth Arden Green Tea is as a fragrance)
Day 2: 5p pieces for the silver – thankfully I had some in my purse.
Day 3: Matthew 21:1-11. Donkey or palm leaf – Playmobil pot plant pieces.
Day 4: Matthew 26:26-29. Cup or bread – a Playmobil wine glass and a piece of bread.
Day 5: Luke 22:39-46, 54a. Praying hands or pipecleaner man – I stuck together some pink foam which I cut into the shape of praying hands. A little lurid in colour.
Day 6: John 19:1-7. Purple cloth. Well the cloth is maroon, but it was the best I could find.
Day 7: John 19:16-17. Cross. I made this by snipping off the bottom of one of the kids’ palm crosses and sticking it together. Shhhh – don’t tell them.
Day 8: John 19:18. Nails. Sourced from the Vicar’s tool cupboard.
Day 9: John 19:33-35. Toothpick (for the spear). Actually I used half a cocktail stick (no toothpicks in the Vicarage), covered in silver foil.
Day 10: Matthew 27: 57-60. Rock. Some gravel from the drive. Washed.
Day 11: Mark 16:1-3. Cinnamon/cloves/spices. Had plenty of these in the cupboard.
Day 12: John 20:1-8. And nothing in the egg! This was easy.
If you’re really keen, Meredith commented last year with fifteen readings from Mark or even a series of 21 readings which you could use instead. And a Twitter friend mentioned that she’s adapted the idea for her Sunday school class. I’m hoping to extract some details from her later!
Posted in Faith, tagged Bible, biblical research, Cambridge, Christianity, cross, David Instone-Brewer, death, Easter, evidence, experts, Jesus, Jewish, manuscript, Munich Talmud, Peter Williams, resurrection, Tyndale House, video, YouTube on 5 April, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Tyndale House, the biblical research centre in Cambridge, have produced three short video clips for Easter, with biblical scholars talking about evidence for Jesus’ trial, death and resurrection. One of the clips, where David Instone-Brewer and Peter Williams are looking at the Munich Talmud, was something I’d never heard about before – a very early Jewish manuscript tradition which speaks of the charges that were brought against Jesus. Fascinating.
Posted in Faith, tagged 66, 66 clouds, Bible, bible books, Christ, Christianity, Church, faith, scripture, sixty-six, video, visualisation, whole bible, word cloud, wordle, YouTube on 4 March, 2011| 4 Comments »
Just saw these wonderful video clips from 66 Clouds. They show wordles – word frequency pictures – of every book in the Bible and another of the whole Bible. Fantastic! They also do posters, but the cost of shipping to the UK might be prohibitive – maybe worth enquiring though, eh?
First the whole bible:
And here are all the books in order:
[HT: Dan Green]
Posted in Faith, tagged 1611, 400th anniversary, Authorised Version, Bible, bible translation, Christ the Truth, Glenn Scrivener, King James Version, KJV, The King's English on 4 January, 2011| Leave a Comment »
I’m sure most of you have clocked that it’s the 400th anniversary of the publication of the Authorised Version of the bible, also known as the King James Version or KJV. This bible translation had a profound effect on the English language, as well as on the people of England and the English speaking world. There are lots of things going on this year to celebrate, including a whole day of bible readings on Radio 4.
Glenn Scrivener, who blogs very thoughtfully over at Christ the Truth, has a special website going for the year, The King’s English, where he’s blogging daily on phrases from the KJV that have passed into (more or less) common usage in the English language. If you love words, or if you love the Word, go and see what Glenn has to say. Today, for instance, he’s posted on ‘Be fruitful and multiply’.
Posted in Faith, tagged Bible, Children, Christmas story, David Suchet, Jago, Jesus Storybook Bible, Kids, Light of the World, Nativity, Sally Lloyd-Jones, YouTube on 14 December, 2010| 1 Comment »
Just came across this lovely new video clip of the Christmas story, taken from the most excellent Jesus Storybook Bible. I do hope this means that there are plans afoot to animate the whole thing.
[HT Justin Taylor]
Posted in Church, Faith, tagged Bible, biblical meditation, Church, meditation, prayer, spiritual discipline, St James New Barnet, weekend away on 1 November, 2010| 2 Comments »
Just in case you thought I’d given up the ghost (check the spooky Halloween reference), I am actually here. We’re back from a few half term days away in London. We were mighty pleased to return to an unburgled Vicarage, I can tell you. And the cat and fish were still alive, thanks to Beauty, who negotiated our alarm to come in and feed the animals. Phew.
Our trip began at the weekend away of St James New Barnet, where old college friend the Baker is vicar. He and his wife Girlpreacha (and their five kids) are at a similar stage to us – in their second year of incumbancy. Their church is also quite similar to ours, so it was great when the Baker asked my Vicar to be the speaker. It was wonderful to be listening to talks by my husband and not worrying about the organisation! The kids had a brilliant time with two Oak Hill Youth and Children’s Ministry students, learning about the lost son and his older brother from Luke 15, just like the adults.
I came away particularly challenged by God to spend more time in biblical meditation. The Vicar has been bending my ear about this for months, if not years. But you know how it is. He’s my husband, so when he gets all excited about something I confess that it does occasionally wash over me, cos he’s talking about it whilst I’m worrying about taking the kids to swimming, or getting the washing done, or wondering when we’re going to get round to painting over those patches on the kitchen ceiling where the strip lights were taken down when we moved in.
So even though I’d heard about meditation, and even read a few of the Vicar’s excellent blog posts on the subject, it took a weekend away for his wisdom to sink in properly. He called meditation ‘the middle spiritual discipline, between bible reading and prayer’, where we let God’s word sink deeply into our hearts. As a natural activist, this is a discipline which does not come easily to me. I like to read the bible and I like to pray through the issues I see around us. But I’ve seen how the ‘hard work’ (as he described it) of meditation has borne fruit in my husband’s life. For a while I’ve envied the Vicar’s love for God and the delight he finds in the Lord, which I can see are chiefly the result of his times of meditation. So now I am resolved to incorporate this discipline into my rather haphazard devotional life. He recommended just a short time each day (he mentioned six minutes!) meditating on the benefits that we have because of Jesus (listed in his blog post). This morning I meditated on Psalm 119v33-36, which was recommended in a book I am currently reading.
The thing is, it’s the long term benefit of biblical meditation that I need and that I want. So I’m also praying for pereverence perseverance…
Posted in Faith, tagged Bible, Christianity, Colossians 2, faith, Northern Women's Convention, scripture reading, sermon, Thabiti Anyabwile on 9 September, 2010| 2 Comments »
We had a helpful sermon series on Colossians earlier in the year, and I’m looking forward to hearing Lizzy Smallwood speak from the same book at the Northern Women’s Convention on 9th October. In the meantime, this is a brilliant reminder of the riches of Chapter 2.
[HT Dan Green]
Posted in Church, Fun, Kids, tagged Bible, Christianity, CPAS, Devon, Edgehill, faith, Family, Fun, holiday, Pathfinder, summer, Teenagers, venture on 12 August, 2010| 4 Comments »
Last week we got back from the Edgehill Pathfinder venture. We’d stayed in a boarding school in Devon with our kids, a brilliant bunch of leaders and 65 11-14 year olds. We had loads of fun (3 wonderful beach trips, fantastic crafts, excellent games and some lively humour, which included the consumption of delights such as oven-baked tarantula). We made lots of friends (even us mummies who were caring for kids whilst the dads led activities). And we heard the gospel told afresh. The Queen, the Joker and the Engineer were old enough to attend the sessions alongside the Pathfinders for the first time this year and they (aswell as their teenage friends) were gripped by the lively and faithful teaching.
The head honcho, Tim Ambrose posted this thanksgiving prayer letter on his blog last week:
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