HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Here are some great links to start the year with
Sacred Treasure
- Grant Osborne gives a very helpful introduction to the divergent genealogies of Jesus in Matthew & Luke.
- He’s done it with a previous work, now follow the progress of Ally Gordon’s latest painting.
- Research suggests that using Dec 25th to celebrate Christ’s birth dates back to a time far earlier than the common assumption of it being merely a pagan festival adopted as Christianity moved into northern Europe. e.g. Augustine did in around AD400. (HT Beth Maynard)
- The extraordinary tale of the vicar’s wife who was a stripper – it’s not what you thought!
- A plea to defend the helpless and bring justice – was it Obama? Oprah? Bono?! No – it’s Proverbs 31! Very revealing! (HT Beth again)
Topical Treasure
- China deliberately wrecked the Copenhagen climate change talks – according to someone in the room… (HT John Naughton) The sign of things to come…?
- In case you missed it, Rwanda has become the first land-mine-free country. Alleluia. Now for everywhere else…
- Planet Slum – a moving if brief photo essay on the world’s slums (Nairobi, Caracas, Mumbai and Jakarta) by Norwegian photojournalist Jonas Bendiksen
- An interesting take on national wealth distribution:
Quirky Treasure
- WHAT?!! Swindon twins with saccharine fake reality Walt Disney world?? Chalk and cheese, princess and pauper, De Vito & Swarzenegger. They must both be mad. Or perhaps EVERYBODY’s mad.
- Have you noticed how many movie posters use a blue and orange combination? Well you will after this bit of randomness…
- This is a combination of the quirky and the sacred – some artists (the Glue Society) imagine some biblical scenes as recorded through satellite photography!
4 responses
The stripping vicar’s wife is a cautionary tale to us all. I would undoubtedly have blogged on that if I’d seen it! But surely its a dodgy way to demonstrate the risk of judging people – the risk is simply about misleading people, or getting the wrong end of the stick. Mouse recommends Hookers For Jesus if you want to really challenge your preconceptions about people.
Too true, CM, too true.
thanks for the recommendation and Happy New Year!
For those interested in putting some flesh on the bones of the maps in this post and getting a better understanding of why tackling inequality is very important (from a practical as well as theological point of view) I can recomend The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.
Thanks for the tip, Ross