A Day Sixteen Flashback.

Back on day sixteen I suggested an attempt at Psalm 23 to the tune of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."

Someone has been there already.  Enjoy.

With bonus points awarded if you can get a congregation to join in.

Day Thirty-One - Epilogue

Well I was surprised that I saw this through to the end.

There's a lot of reading in the bible.  If you've never read the bible before, this probably isn't the best way to go about it.  In places it can be a bit of a slog, especially where there are long genealogies.  There's a load of rules in the first week, with plenty of kings and battles to keep track of.  Jesus doesn't get a mention until the middle of the fourth week, and then he's gone in a couple of days. 

There is a considerable time commitment involved.  There's probably a couple of hours reading each day. I'm a pretty fast reader, and I really enjoy reading, but even I found it slow going in places.  It's sore on the eyes after a while, although being able to increase the font size helped.  And there were occasions where I did fall a bit behind, mainly to save being rude to friends.  I'm fortunate that I can sit at my desk at break times, tea in one hand and phone in the other, reading my online version.  I've also been able to sit and read when I've had spare time, like when the bike was getting tyres fitted.

Reading the bible in one pass meant that I was able to join the various bible stories into one timeline.  As Nik notes, "The Bible's a cracking good read" but I think it's one that sould be savoured.  Now I'm planning on going back and spending a bit of time focusing on some particular books.  Job springs to mind, John's Gospel, and the letter to the Hebrews are my first candidates for real study.  But not this month.


In all, I've enjoyed it.  It's been good to catch up with old friends.  Just the next time we all meet up, I won't have them all round at once.

And I do feel a bit more ready to take on my placement next month.

In other news, I've had my first real pastoral care type encounter.  There's nothing I can blog about it, for understandable confidentiality reasons.  I think it went OK, sometimes all you can do is listen.

Day Thirty.

Revelation 22

¹And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.  ²In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
 ³And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:
 ⁴And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.
 ⁵And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.
 ⁶And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done.
 ⁷Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.
 ⁸And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things.
 ⁹Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God.
 ¹⁰And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand.
 ¹¹He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
 ¹²And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
 ¹³I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
 ¹⁴Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
 ¹⁵For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
 ¹⁶I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.
 ¹⁷And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
 ¹⁸For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
 ¹⁹And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
 ²⁰He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
 ²¹The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

Here endeth the lesson.

Day Twenty-Nine

More letters today.  One of the books I'm wanting to go back and have a nose at in greater depth is the letter to the Hebrews.  There seems to be a lot going on there, but that's for another day.

Tomorrow is Judgement Day.

Day Twenty-Eight - The Letters

THUD!

That's the sound of a letter from Paul landing on a first century Corinthian doormat.  Never let it be said that he was a man of few words.

Tomorrow, more of the letters.

Day Twenty-Seven - Acts

Acts 2:15 "These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning!"

Nine in the morning?

Long long ago in a holiday camp far far away, nine in the morning was just a state of mind, and the sun was always over the yard-arm somewhere. Peter, I've been employed there, done that, and in 1994 I even got the T shirt to prove it.

There's many a tale to tell...

Tomorrow, we find out what the Romans ever did for us...

Day Twenty-Five - Mark and Luke

Following along to someone elses reading plan meant that Jesus died yesterday.  He died today.  He will also die twice tomorrow.

But he rose from the dead yesterday.  He rose again today.  And I'm pretty sure he will rise again twice tomorrow.  That's pretty good.

Knowing he's risen.  Priceless.

Some things in life money can't buy.

Day Twenty-Four ...And in With The New.

So today it was all of Matthew and a wee bit of Mark. 

When you do the whole bible in chunks, you realise that the whole of Jesus' ministry, or at least a gospel worth, can be read in a couple of hours.  Compared to some of the early prophets that went on for a couple of days, Jesus really wasn't with us for that long.  In fact, his disciples use up more words than he does.  Well it's not the quantity, it's the quality.

But today took me past Matthew 7:24-27 about the wise and foolish builders.  This reading was used for the Young Church last weekend.  By way of demonstration, the house had shoogly foundations until the words of Jesus were used as underpinnings.

Perhaps not the best illustration, but you had to be there...

 Tomorrow it's on to Luke 15 via the rest of Mark.

Day Twenty-Three. Out with the Old...

So this is the end of the Old Testament.  Through the last of the prophets.  Realising that an atheists bible would be so much shorter, as atheism is a non-prophet organisation...

So I went through Jonah.  He was regurgitated on the shores near to Nineveh, where he went and proclaimed the Lord's message.  The Ninevans (Ninevehans?) immediately agreed to dress in sackcloth, sit on ashes and repent from their wicked ways.

It was a pretty prompt result, but if you're presented with a man standing there, dripping in whale puke, you'll agree to pretty much anything he says, as long as the scary man goes and stands downwind...

Tomorrow it's the New Testament, The Gospel according to Mark, and, alas, more begatting.

Day Twenty-Two

Up to the end of Amos via the furnace and the lions den.  A risky day for all concerned.

Apparently only people without beards can survive the lions den, because in tests, 8 out of 10 cats prefered whiskers.

Let's have a blast from the past (about 3,000 years ago), pop pickers, with some Boney M. (because I forgot to put this in when I did the psalms)

Day Twenty-one

So now we're up to Ezekiel 47.

This takes us past Ezekiel 37 verses 1-14 where the prophet saw the valley of "Dem Bones"

Now hear the word of the Lord!

A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Ray Harryhausen,  I've been a fan of stop motion animation for years, and Ray is the inspiration for many a modern animator, so much so that the bar in Monsters Inc is named after him.

So once you've seen Jason and the Argonauts, the only thing that can possibly enter my head when I hear about the valley of the dry bones, is the scene where the teeth of the Hydra are sown and the skeletal army rises from the ground.  If you've not seen it (where have you been?), please enjoy the following from the film.

Day Nineteen

ne ne ne ne ne ne nineteen

A shedload of Isaiah and 37 chapters of Jeremiah got me back up to date.  My head is now buzzing with warnings of false gods and false idols.

But there was mention of a new covenant and someone who is still to come.  Who could that be?

But of course, tonight Mrs Gerbil started talking about some of the things in Revelations. Typical.  You start reading an interesting book and some sod has to give away the ending!

Day Seventeen and a Quarter

When I saw Song of Songs described in my Bible as "Solomon's Most Excellent Love Song" I realised that Bill and Ted must have paused their time travels to do a bit of translation.  They probably overshot on the way back to find Socrates. (Dust... Wind... Dude)

I just think that "God gave rock 'n' roll to you" is a much better lyric than "Your teeth are like a flock of newly shorn sheep  coming up from the washing place"  I tried this line out on Mrs Gerbil and she seemed unconvinced - she gave me THAT look. There's probably a lot lost in translation here, so while I work out what the two of you, the maidens and the night watchman are on about, would the lot of you please just take the portable couch and get a room.

That's all for now.  Party on, and be excellent to each other.

Day Seventeen

So today I finished the psalms, then went on to do Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.

Nothing much to report.  Solomon seems like a wise old chap, despite his earlier worhiping of flase gods.  If only he had listened to his own proverbs.

I've caught up to being a day behind. 

Day Sixteen

Today I got up to Psalm 100, or about halfway through day 15's reading.  The psalms are where modern hymwriters go to seek inspiration, or in other words, to steal a line or two.

The version of the bible that I'm reading has captions above some of the psalms describing them as a well written psalm.  I'm not sure how much significance this has to a modern reader, given  that these same verses have been translated into english from the original, probably through translators who want to put their own spin on things.Some bits feel as if an early version of Bad Translator has been at work.  For example, the first three verses of psalm 23 translated at random 56 times comes out as...

"The Lord is my Shepherd, I do not know. I think the watershed. Give me your real name and spirit."

or

"My pastor said. Water transport is high. I feel good, he thought the street."

or even

"One of my friends did not rest in peace. This is the name of my mind." 

(please note that this is most certainly not the word of God.)

So it might have been a well written psalm when originally written, but it's a bit rough now.

For a bit of entertainment, in the spirit of  hymn writers everywhere, and in particular, as tribute to "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" let's try a version of Psalm 23 to the tune of "Tiptoe through the Tulips"
  

Day Fifteen

I've done all of day 12 and a good chunk of day 13, that includes Esther, Nehemiah, Ezra and Job.  Not too keen on Job - he was a bit of a slog.  I may do the first 20 or so psalms later to take me up to the end of day 13.  If I was on track, I should have finished the psalms today.

Day Fourteen

I'm a bit behind.  I was visiting some friends all weekend, and I didn't want to be as rude as to spend hours staring at my phone.  I'll catch up soon enough.

Day Eleven. To the end of Chronicles

Glad to see the back of Chronicles.  Most of it has been told in the preceding books, so it was a bit dull.

Tomorrow it's on to Job 5.

Day Ten. Of Kings and Chronicles

So I'm a third of the way through.  It's heavy going, as it's a lot of reading to fit around work and sleeping, but I'm still going.

Today took me through the last of Kings whch led up to the exile in Babylon.  Chronicles is a bit dull, as there's a lot of geneology, or if I was reading an older translation, a load of begatting.

Tomorrow it's on to 2 Chronicles 33, and probably more begatting.

Day Nine. Kings, Kings and more Kings.

Today I encountered King Solomon.  At first glance he seems like a wise old chap, but by the end he's off worshiping false gods.

It's getting a bit repettitive.  God leads these folk out of Egypt, shows miracle after miracle, and says in no uncertain terms that bad things will happen if you worship false gods, and they still go off and do wrong things.  Israel, would you just get a grip on yourself!  Do you want God to put it in thousand foot high burning letters above Jerusalem?  "THERE IS NO OTHER GOD THAN ME!!!"  Would they get the message?

Probably not.

Tomorrow it's the remainder of 2 Kings.