Living Open Source» advent

Advent Turns Desert into Garden

Tim — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:10:44 +0000

When God comes, wildernesses will become gardens. On the back of swords being recycled into ploughs, and goats chilling out with leopards, Isaiah’s picture of a desert in bloom inspired this week’s image.

Click for larger image.

Thirsty deserts will be glad; barren lands will celebrate and blossom with flowers. Deserts will bloom everywhere and sing joyful songs.

Jars of Clay – Christmas Songs

Tim — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:27:19 +0000

One of my favourite Christian bands, Jars of Clay have a Christmas songs album out. They have a nice animated version of the nativity to accompany one of their songs as well as a book of reflections (Life as Advent).

Buy Christmas Songs at Amazon. or as a MP3 download.

Ploughshares out of swords

Tim — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:24:45 +0000

They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

Advent begins with one of Isaiah’s wonderful pictures of the kind of transformation that this season announces. Swords into garden tools. What might be transformed in our communities? – knives and guns, into shopping trolleys and walking aids?

One of the great literal examples of such transformations is found in Mozambique where literal millions of weapons were turned into art, furniture and all manner of objects after the end of the civil war in the nineties.

There must be loads of images and footage to illustrate this week’s text, but then Isaiah paints should wonderful pictures, may be you won’t need one. Anyway, the stuff about Mozambique can be found on the Christian Aid web site or you can watch this video on YouTube, Tree of Guns.

Worship Backgrounds Flickr Group

Tim — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 16:29:57 +0000

I stumbled upon a fantastic public group on Flickr, where worship backgrounds are shared willingly with others. With 542 photos, you’ll not be short of images for next Sunday. You can join the group yourself if you have a Flickr account and start sharing your own creations.

As a head start, here’s one to get the Advent season going from The Muffin Man:

Too many people miss the waiting and anticipation of Advent. This is a helpful image to begin Advent.

The public group page is here.

LivingOS on Flickr.