Pilgrim's Progress

A Shadow Of My Future Self

 

This was prompted by an email from a friend who's working through a lot of stuff right now. As I read it, some words popped into my mind (a paraphrase of Romans 8:18) and I've put them into this animation.

It's a play on words - we normally say "I'm a shadow of my former self" but Christian hope flips this round and says the best is yet to come.

It brings together the tension between God's promise that one day he will complete the work he began in us, but the painful wait in the meantime!

(Please note this animation requires Flash version 8 or later. The animation will detect what version you are running and advise you accordingly. Click here to get the Flash v9 player.)

I'd like to thank my producer ...

zsI've never won a holiday or a new car. I never came first in the sack race or got picked first for football. But now, I'm recompensed by receiving a "Thinking Blogger" award by Malcolm Chamberlain, who was dragged kicking and screaming into blogworld, but now wild horses couldn't tear him away.

It's always great to know my musings and arty offerings are making connections with people, esp when it makes connections with people's spiritual journey. So thanks Malcolm.

I'm not a great blog reader I must confess, but here are a few of the ones I read reasonably often.

1. Cartoon Church. I think it's the satire and the quirky humour I love as much as the cartoons.

2. Ben Hanbury. Digital art geezer who works for BBC. Shame he uses Apple Macs though as I can't try out the software.

3. Lone Ranger Personal Blog. It feels like another world politically and maybe spiritually, but the way he writes is just so FUNNY. And also good to read someone from a different cultural stance.

And at the risk of sounding like a complete creep

4. Malcolm Chamberlain - a great mixture of emerging church thinking, comment on topical issues, and a great place to find YouTube videos that are likely to offend "nice" Christians. It's been great to get to know and work with Malcolm through DREAM, and he's a good person to play "big idea football" with.

5. Logos Bible Software Blog - more aimed at users of Logos Bible Software but it's a great source of ideas and stimulation anyway if you're digging away in the depths of the good book.

P.S. I used to enjoy Mark Balfour's blog but it has gone to the great file cache in the sky now. I still think he's a blogger at heart.

HE IS RISEN!

I can't quite express what I feel about the resurrection of Jesus this year ... a mixture of joy, hope, wonder, of being part of a living present reality, and a sense that things really can change.

Two new animations ... Click on the images to view animations.

1) "Friday to Sunday" (requires Flash 6+; about 775K)
2) "Resurrection" (requires Quicktime; about 2.7MB)

The Long Descent

Can we begin to enter into what Jesus went through?

(Click here for a bigger version.)