At Christmas, bookshops stock a lot of stories about Santa, and at Easter, you can’t avoid bunnies and chocolate. If you’re looking to balance that with picture books telling the original Easter story of Jesus’ last weeks on earth, here are my top recommendations. Joy Cowley’s The Easter Story [A version of this review first […]
One of my very favourite places in Melbourne is Sandridge Bridge, home to the Travellers sculptural installation. Enormous steel figures fan out along the bridge (they used to move out at sunrise and in at sunset) representing the indigenous people, and then nine successive waves of migrants. The bridge also hosts 128 panels for Melbourne residents’ […]
A very warm welcome to guest poster Chris Chamberlain. Chris grew up in Timaru and West Auckland.  He has been in Baptist church pastoral leadership roles for over 20 years in exciting places like the South Island’s West Coast and central Christchurch.  Experiencing the destructive forces of the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes has introduced him to […]
A warm welcome to this year’s Advent in Art series, where we join thousands of others in contemplating artistic works. This week we are in the season of Christmas, and conclude the series. For an introduction to this series, and He Qi, the artist featured in 2014, please see the first post, on the Annunciation. […]
Happy Advent, everyone! A warm welcome to this year’s Advent in Art series, where we join thousands of others in contemplating artistic works while we wait, wait, wait for Christmas. Advent in Art 2014: Featuring artist He Qi He Qi is one of my favourite artists, so I’m particularly excited that this year’s Advent in […]
From Rudolf and Santa to Slinky Malinki and the proverbial Pukeko in a Punga Tree, there’s a Christmas picture book for everyone. In most bookshops, though, Baby Jesus is hidden behind Grinches, trains and elves. If you’re in the market for Christmas books for kids that tell the story of God coming into the world as […]
How can something as (potentially) shallow as Christmas gift shopping be a great way to make a difference in the world? Easy 🙂 If we aspire to living a life where our actions reflect our values, then how we spend our time and money on Christmas gifts can make a real impact on people beyond […]
I grew up with Father Christmas visiting each December. We had a particularly awesome system, in fact, that involved pillowcases instead of stockings (primarily so a board game could fit, I think). As I got older, I became aware that Father Christmas from the adult point of view was part of our family history, too. My […]
A warm welcome to Stacey, who wrote this excellent guest post – thanks so much! Stacey is a meat-eating, raw-milk advocating, pro-vaccine-ing, long-haired, homeschooling, MSc-degree-holding, quilting, left-voting, mystery-novel-loving, arm-chair-permaculturing, chicken-owning, fair-trade-chocolate-eating, hippie-ish Christian mother of 3 (going on 4), who just had fish and chips for dinner and whose children are, (right now as I […]
We don’t know for sure that Mary was a breastfeeding mother, but it seems a reasonable inference. In a time before formula and modern medical care, she would have had few other options, and if she or someone else hadn’t breastfed Jesus he would almost certainly have died in infancy, from malnourishment or water-borne disease, […]