Sunday Snippet: The Bible Big Picture and A GiveAway…

You have been asking me to post the fun things we have been doing for school this year and the I thought I would just dive in and show you the first thing of each week. I wanted to do an overview of the Bible because my younger kids haven’t done a “Big Picture” before and myself and my older kids can always use a refresh… I really wanted to discover the people and places of Bible Times in a way that would help us remember how the Bible fits together as a whole. To begin with we are re-learning the Bible in Fifty Words… Another resource we are using was discovered by my map lover, Hood #4, who begged me to buy a bundle of Bible Map Posters… that he saw when we were wandering through the book store…

I thought that they looked a bit dare I say schoolish… and we have so many resources for maps: A Bible Map Book, A Study Bible… Maps in the back of almost every Bible. Well I popped the first map on the fridge and just left it there… in no time at all we were getting a pretty good idea about what went where. So we read the notes that came with them and looked up the Bible references. Fascinating – really, Bible maps are the snapshots of ancient times. Once we had fully discovered the first map we went onto the second one… and we have just traveling along. We are busy discovering Solomon’s Kingdom right now.

I remember years ago that we had a guest preacher, who preached a sermon on the churches in Revelation… and he did a wonderful thing: Instead of just saying in this town they had a church and they did this and that, he introduced each church with a “word picture” of what that town would have been like. If it was in the mountains, the desert, near the sea and so on. It was brilliant it added a historical dimension to the sermon and more important, associations to help you remember things!!! Let’s be honest how many hours of sermons have you spent flipping through the color maps on the last pages of your Bible. Well finally we are getting acquainted with the places of the Bible and yesterday, when visitors in Church told us they were from Tyre… we knew straight away where it was!!!

Otherwise we have been reading mini-Bible-biographies from books like these:

These are brilliant for kids that know the main players in the Bible like the back of their hands!!! The book has a story about some of the more obscure people in the Bible, but while their stories are a little less mainstream they really do highlight the main gist of the Bible. People whose actions literally changed the course of history, like Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, Moses’ friend, Hur and many more. The stories are short and easily readable, great for an after dinner Bible Study and there are, in typical Day One Style a couple of questions at the end of each chapter, just to think about. We are still reading our way through the Old Testament, but there is a New Testament version to read as well… Can’t wait!!!

Anyway, I thought it has been a while since we had a GiveAway for you… and the time has indeed come. We have a copy of both of these books, "Twelve Hidden Heroes (OT) Book 2: More People in the Bible Who Did Brave Things for God" (Rebecca Parkinson) and "Twelve Hidden Heroes (NT) Book 2: More People in the Bible Who Did Brave Things for God" (Rebecca Parkinson) to post anywhere in the world… all you have to do is leave a comment on this post and we will pick one lucky winner…

As usual I have to thank CBD, our GiveAway book suppliers for more great books.

The GiveAway works in the usual way, comment before the end of this coming Sunday, 24 July 2011, and we will draw and publish the winner next week! – I won’t respond to your comments as I do on our other posts because I don’t want to be included in our own giveaway.

Our GiveAways are open to everyone: If you have won a GiveAway before never fear – enter away. If you live on the far side of the world – enter away. Postage takes forever from here but eventually it should get to you! Good luck and get commenting!!!