Julie: On being a Fig Tree (in a Mark Drama production)
For a couple of months in the lead up to Easter, I was part of a Mark Drama cast. It was led by our friend, Rick Creighton, who teaches at a local theological seminary. Most of the cast members were his students, with three of us coming from our organisation: Richard (who had played Jesus …
Luke 9: Who is the greatest?
While everyone was marvelling at all that Jesus did, he said to his disciples, “Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.” But they did not understand what this meant. It was hidden from them, so that they did …
Fear and Faith (Luke 8:22-52)
From our monthly newsletter. Do get in touch if you’d like to subscribe. One day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.”… As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came… the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger… Jesus got up and rebuked …
Africans demand power and Westerners look for comfort
Paul, the apostle of Jesus, may have described himself as “as Jewish as you get” but he actually grew up in a Greek-speaking Jewish community outside his ethnic homeland and that gave him a very helpful cross-cultural perspective. What was better? Greek philosophy? Jewish traditions? A blend of the two? Like many young men in …
Pilkington of Uganda
While studying Bible translation and mission in Kenya, I came across some stories of one young linguist missionary to Uganda called Pilkington. There’s a great out-of-print book called ‘Pilkington of Uganda’ which is well worth a read and it seems the Internet Archive have made it available. He was a remarkable young man much loved …
How long have we lived where? 2022
A little over 3 years ago as we contemplated what should have been a 8-9 month stay in the UK, I put together a chart of where different members of our family had lived their lives. Abigail (9) asked me again recently for some of the data so we did an update. The last year …
Meat? People of hair?
The Greek word σαρξ (sarx) gets a variety of translations. Sometimes it means meat or flesh. In Luke chapter 3 verse 6 the message from Isaiah (40:5) is a promise that after the way is cleared, all σαρξ will see the God’s salvation. The Hebrew word was בָּשָׂר֙ ‘basar’, which has a similar (but not …
Tadpoles
This is one of our girls’ favourite times of year in Nigeria – when streams run down and pool a bit with just the right kind of environment for tadpoles. This year Rebekah appears to be naming hers, and there seems something of a K-Pop theme. I guess tadpoles read backwards, which would be why …
New tune: Lord, I have made your word my choice
I spotted another classic hymn (557 in Praise!) and decided another new tune was in order. This time I had an assistant to sing with me:
How do we write this? Grammaticalisation causing trouble
There are many conundrums in writing the Ishɛ language that I’ve been aware of for some years. One is how to write a verb that pops up in natural speech sounding like ‘aguna‘, or ‘ugunu‘ or ‘egune‘, often explained as meaning ‘again’. (In the negative the construction doesn’t mean ‘again’ so much as ‘no longer’ …