Family Devotions are something I’ve wanted to make a regular spiritual staple for our family for some time now and when I heard about this book, I knew I just had to get a copy. Fifty-two weeks on, I’m so glad I did!
David Murray has crafted an easy to use, understandable and adaptable family devotional tool guiding families on an exploratory journey through many of the Bible’s key moments in a way that is engaging for children and not daunting for parents.
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I began reading this book at Easter, and recently finished this journey through ‘the most important week of the most important person who ever lived’. Tracing the events of the final week of Jesus’ life leading up to (and including) his death, burial and resurrection, I found this journey through the Easter story to be a refreshing and helpful way to ponder, meditate upon and think through these events which are so central to my faith and the faith of Christians across the globe.
Arranged with two primary elements to each chapter – namely the scripture passages from each of the gospel accounts, broken into appropriate sections and included one after the other for easy comparison, followed by commentary by the authors – this book serves certainly as a harmonisation of the gospel accounts, and also as a tool for bible study/personal devotion. If you have ever wanted to delve deeper into some of the criticisms levelled at the gospels by unbelievers, you will likely find this to be a helpful volume to read and keep in your library!
Continue readingAbout a year ago I was asked to speak at an inter-church worship team training/day seminar as one of the guest speakers. The event was organised around a key note session and then breakout groups for each instrument. I had been asked to speak to the bass players breakout group about what worship is and how those who serve the church as part of a worship team can do so effectively. I was then to offer some more specific tips to bass players about their particular role in the overall team (which I may include in a later post). While I was honoured to be asked, I unfortunately was unable to make it to the event, however I had already penned some thoughts which until now have remained unused. I thought I’d post them here and I pray they are helpful to someone.
In arguably his most famous play, Shakespeare’s female protagonist asks a well known question about the substance of a name;
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
I haven’t really thought about this until now, but Shakespeare is like the king of the English language (other authors come and go but Shakespeare will seemingly forever be studied by English students) and yet in this very famous scene the character wants to disregard the word (in this case a surname) as a means of describing the idea or person that it represents. This of course goes against the grain of history in which names carried authority, tradition, and identity.
Similarly, 19th Century Danish Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard is quoted as saying
Now without getting into a full blown discussion on post-modernity, relativism, ‘progressive social norms’ and ‘subjective reality’ (I know, this sounds like an oxymoron, but I’ll leave that for later), I have to say both men were ahead of their time with the notion of wanting to strip words of their definitive meaning, instead freeing up concepts, ideas and even identities to remain undefined and unrestricted. However, I also think this notion is, at times, extremely unhelpful.
Reformed Bapticostal 