The Bible in Song - my blast from the past

The songs below were recorded by the Medical Mission Sisters in the 1960's. I learnt them when I was in primary school and loved them. I've taught what I remembered of them to my children but until recently, when I found them on youtube, I didn't have a recording of them.
Some of the words are available here.

The Parable of the Wedding Banquet: Matthew 22 & Luke 14.
This is our favourite & is fun to sing.





The story of Zacchaeus the tax collector: Luke 19




Luke 17 - this isn't the original recording & isn't the best quality but it's the only one I could find.




'Come down Lord my son is ill...Do not come to my house, I'm unworthy...'
Based on Matthew 8:





John 6 - a hymn I remember from years ago.




Not a Bible story as such but a song about Joy:

Commonplace Book: A Prayer for 2015

 The High Country, Snowy Mountains, Australia

"Thou art the God of the early mornings, the God of the late at nights, the God of the mountain peaks, 

and the God of the sea; but, my God, my soul has further horizons than the early mornings, 

deeper darkness than the nights of earth, higher peaks than any mountain peaks, greater depths than any sea in nature - Thou Who art the God of all these, be my God. 

I cannot reach to the heights or to the depths; there are motives I cannot trace, dreams I cannot get at - my God, search me out."

Oswald Chambers

Pilgrim's Progress Notebook

Pilgrim's Progress is a wonderful read aloud which suits a broad range of ages. I read it to 4 of my children aged 7 to 17 years of age over a number of months and my 15 year old decided he'd do a pictorial narration. These are some of the notebook pages he did. It got out of order in the way I scanned it but it gives an idea of what he did.

 

 

The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer

This book is a suggested choice for devotional reading in Ambleside Year 7. I started reading it so I could discuss it with Nougat who isn't doing year 7 but he's reading it this year as he hadn't read it previously.

Tozer became a Christian at the age of 15. He'd had a life of hardship and because of his impoverished home situation, not much of an education, but by dint of diligent study and good books he started a process of self-education and became skilled in the use of the English language. It is said that when he felt he needed an understanding of Shakespeare's works that he read them on his knees and asked God to give him an understanding of their meaning. He believed that seeking God and seeking truth were the same thing.

The Pursuit of God was written to help those who were hungry for the things of God. Tozer said that his fire, if not large, was real, and he invited others to light their candle at its flame.

We had some good conversations about what Tozer wrote in this book.

Some of my favourite quotes are:

It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act......For such a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a sanctuary. 

The Bible will never be a living book to us until we are convinced that God is articulate in His universe......It is the nature of God to speak. The second person of the Holy Trinity is called the Word. The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God's continuous speech.

One of Nougat's favourite quotes was about honour. Tozer uses the opposite behaviours of Eli the priest (who epically failed to honour God) and the Biblical characters (who honestly tried to glorify God in their lives) and says:

See how God winked at weakness and overlooked failures as He poured upon His servants grace and blessing untold. Let it be Abraham, Jacob, David, Daniel, Elijah or whom you will; honour followed honour as harvest the seed. The man of God set his heart to exalt God above all; God accepted his intention as fact and acted accordingly. Not perfection, but holy intention made the difference.

We talked about holy intention, weakness and failure. We talked about how God looks at the heart and our motivation and the freedom that comes from knowing God's heart towards us in these things. We talked through how everything we do can be sacramental, that is, an outward expression of an inward grace.

An altogether worthwhile and encouraging read which opened up some good discussions between my 16 year old son and me.

My Utmost for His Highest

My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers is a book I re-read each year and these words of his are always relevant and remind me that really, my cup is overflowing and it's my business to be the wife, mother, friend and faithful servant He's called me to be, to leave the results to Him and to believe that what I do has eternal significance whether I get to see that in this life or not.

'The tendency is to look for the marvellous in our experience; we mistake the sense of the heroic for being heroes. It is one thing to go through a crisis grandly, but another thing to go through every day glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, no one paying the remotest attention to us.

Which are the people who have influenced us most? Not the ones who thought they did, but those who had not the remotest notion that they were influencing us. In the Christian life the implicit is never conscious, if it is conscious it ceases to have this unaffected loveliness which is the characteristic of the touch of Jesus. We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.

Is it not too extravagant to say that out of an individual believer rivers are going to flow? "I do not see the rivers," you say. Never look at yourself from the standpoint of - "Who am I? In the history of God's work you will nearly always find that it has started from the obscure, the unknown, the ignored, but the steadfastly true to Jesus Christ.'

Linking to Wednesday with Words