Brick Friday

For those of us who would like to think about what we are celebrating this weekend but who maybe fall asleep actually reading a Bible, here's one with pictures:

the last few days of Jesus' life on Earth, told in Legos

Give away the ESV!

Last week when I was at a Christian bookstore in our town picking up the new Veggie Tales DVD for my little boy, I picked up ten copies of the ESV Outreach New Testament. I've had a link to information about them up on ScriptureMenu.com ever since I first found out about them, but I hadn't been to a Christian bookstore to pick up some copies. I really like the ESV, and wanted a chance to share it with others. And at fifty cents per copy, you can't beat the value! I plopped down a fiver and was able to give a copy of the ESV New Testament to everyone in my Sunday School class. The print is kind of small, but it's a great introduction to the ESV for people who maybe haven't heard of it or haven't had occasion to try it out.

What destroys the yoke?

The KJV of Isaiah 10:27 says:

And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.

This week I was listening to a message where this passage was used as evidence that the anointing of the Holy Spirit (I guess roughly analogous to the Holy Spirit's power working in our lives) is what "destroys" the yoke of slavery. Problem is, I was reading the passage out of my ESV:

And in that day his burden will depart from your shoulder, and his yoke from your neck; and the yoke will be broken because of the fat.

A footnote on the word "fat" says "The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain." The NIV and the NAS both go with "fat" as the proper interpretation. The RSV text, from which both the ESV and the NAS were adapted, seems to go with something totally different:

And in that day his burden will depart from your shoulder, and his yoke will be destroyed from your neck." He has gone up from Rimmon...

The Strong's definition of the word lists the meanings of the word as both "fat" and "oil" (as in anointing oil), with the KJV translating it most often as "oil." What I'm curious to find out is why, since "anointing" seems to be a translation that makes sense (at least to a layman) because of the association with olive oil, and "fat" makes no apparent sense at all... why would so many of the mainstream translations have gone with "fat"?

Flesh or Spirit?

Yesterday I finished a book called Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp. As I read it I kept tripping over things that I didn't particularly agree with, and sometimes I think Pastor Tripp contradicts himself in trivial ways, but by the end of the book I think I understood what he was driving at. Basically, by "shepherding" your children, you train them, over the course of their childhood, not just to "do what is right" but to do it the right way... to do it from their hearts, by the power of the Holy Spirit, not by willpower or whatever. Children are fallen beings, the book reminds us, like we all are, and cannot obey "the law" (Moses' law or Mommy & Daddy's law, it doesn't matter) by works of the flesh.

It's that "like we all are" part that sort of stuck with me. What about me? How often do I do the right thing because of my own willpower, or the knowledge that I'll get in trouble or get arrested or get fired if I do the wrong things, or because someone will get mad and yell at me, or...? Do we forgive others because God's nature rises up in us, or so that the fight will be over and we can go back to normal life? Do we resist chewing out that rude stranger in the grocery store because God helps us to have self-control, or because we don't want to make a scene or because we are afraid of reprisals by that stranger? I've begun to think that most well-adjusted, law-abiding adults act that way because they know that they have to or else there will be unwanted consequences. I want to train both my children and myself to live and act by the Spirit of God inside us as often as possible, and to do the right thing by fleshly means as seldom as possible.

THR3E

Saturday we went to see the first theatrical release from FoxFaith Movies, THREE (based on the novel by Ted Dekker). The movie is a psychological thriller, along the lines of Speed or The Silence of the Lambs, or more recently Saw or SE7EN, except without three things: (1) gory crime scenes, (2) nudity, and (3) profanity.

So the question is... is it better for the omission of those things, or worse, or neither? I'd say that as someone who enjoys that kind of movie but has not been able to watch much intense stuff since I have a young child in the house... I enjoyed it very much! The movie is low-budget, but the story is solid and keeps you guessing, and the twist at the end totally caught me off guard. We saw it with friends, and everyone seemed to enjoy it, so that's a good sign. Critics have compared it unfavorably to other movies (particularly Saw for the plot similarity, SE7EN for title similarity, and a 2002 movie called Adaptation which is about a screenwriter who mentions an idea he has for a movie with the same twist at the end as this one!), but I can't say that it seemed like a hack to me. If FoxFaith can up the ante on budget and move on from here, this is a FABULOUS starting point!

Birth of Jesus

My son got the Lego Star Wars game for Christmas. When I ran across this old link in my bookmarks, I knew that I should share it with Christdot, even though it is a few days late for the holiday:

The Birth of Christ

This Little Light Of Mine

I've posted a new document at Scripture Menu, and I'd love to get some feedback on it. Take a look:

The Light of the Lamp

Please post any comments here on Christdot! That is, post comments here if you LIKED it. If you didn't like it, here's something that may put you back in a good mood:

IIIIIIII.com