In this thoughtful book, Freya Jaffke describes festival celebrations in relation to child development in the first seven years. She considers in detail the main festivals throughout the year: Easter, Whitsun, St John's, starting school, harvest, Michaelmas, lantern time, birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany and carnival. Drawing on many examples, she shows how we can celebrate festivals with children at home and in kindergarten in a meaningful way. Every festival is prefaced with a deeper contemplation for adults, before considering preparations with children, followed by the actual organisation of the festival -- with games, craft activities and decorations, stories, songs, poems and the seasonal nature table.

A practical, exercise-filled companion to A Hunger for Healing that puts into practice the Christian principles of healing and growth

For many thousands of people, the Twelve Steps have become the spiritual discipline for a new decade, a way to turn to God and begin a pilgrimage toward wholeness as well as a journey out of addiction. Relating each of the Steps to biblical teaching, J. Keith Miller takes the reader inside the Steps, actually working through each one.

Each section of A Hunger for Healing Workbook begins with one of the Twelve Steps, followed by a biblical quote that touches upon the theme, a suggested reading in A Hunger for Healing, and a concise explanation of the Step and how it relates to spiritual growth. Built on solid biblical principles, the exercises and inventories provided will promote introspection, reflection, and action -- a clear pathway out of compulsion and pain into a world of serenity and healthy interaction with God and others.

Step by Step, this life-transforming program helps readers to

• Acknowledge their need for God's healing power


• Surrender to God's care


• Let God remove character defects


• Reconcile themselves with God and others


• Use prayer to enrich the life of the spirit


• Heal broken lives and relationships

Keating discusses the principles of contemplative prayer?the retreat into the ?inner room? mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 6:6. In the inner room, God acts as a divine therapist, healing us and forcing us to recognize how many barriers we put up between ourselves and God. This process is the foundation of centering prayer?a technique of prayer that Keating and other contemporary mystics have revived out of the ancient mystical traditions of the Desert Fathers and the medieval mystics.

This is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the internal arrangement of church buildings in Western Europe between 1500 and 2000, showing how these arrangements have met the liturgical needs of their respective denominations, Catholic and Protestant, over this period. In addition to a chapter looking at the general impact of the Reformation on church buildings, there are separate chapters on the churches of the Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions between the mid-sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, and on the ecclesiological movement of the nineteenth century and the liturgical movement of the twentieth century, both of which have impacted on all the churches of Western Europe over the past 150 years. The book is extensively illustrated with figures in the text and a series of plates and also contains comprehensive guides to both further reading and buildings to visit throughout Western Europe.

Will the Christian church live or die? What is the way ahead? Answering these questions, this book challenges all people of God to seek unity in and beyond the norms of dogma and hierarchy.

This is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the internal arrangement of church buildings in Western Europe between 1500 and 2000, showing how these arrangements have met the liturgical needs of their respective denominations, Catholic and Protestant, over this period. In addition to a chapter looking at the general impact of the Reformation on church buildings, there are separate chapters on the churches of the Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions between the mid-sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, and on the ecclesiological movement of the nineteenth century and the liturgical movement of the twentieth century, both of which have impacted on all the churches of Western Europe over the past 150 years. The book is extensively illustrated with figures in the text and a series of plates and also contains comprehensive guides to both further reading and buildings to visit throughout Western Europe.

If George and Mary Bailey are annual guests at your home every winter, you already know that It's a Wonderful Life is more than just a holiday tradition--it's a powerful reminder that our lives can change everyone around us, for better or worse. But what can this Christmas classic teach us about our everyday lives? 52 Little Lessons from It's a Wonderful Life will change the way you think about this holiday staple, from the lightheartedness of George and Mary's floor-parting dance to the poignancy of a community that rallies to save a desperate man, Bob Welch's 52 Little Lessons from It's a Wonderful Life will inspire you to live for the things that matter most. Welch invites us to revisit the defining lessons in Frank Capra's 1946 classic and discover new dimensions of the film you've seen time and again, including: What can we all learn from Mary's quiet contentedness? Can George's selflessness make you rethink your own priorities? What impact do we have on the people around us? Join Welch for a close-up of the characters and themes that shape this timeless story of resilience and redemption. You'll be reminded that life's most important work is often the work we never planned to do, that God can use the most unlikely among us to get the job done, and that grace is the greatest gift we can possibly give. Discover why It's a Wonderful Life is more than just a holiday tradition--it's an inspiration for us to lead better lives, to become people of honor and integrity, and to recognize what really matters.

Edition and translation of Anglo-Saxon text, shedding light on Sunday observance and other issues. Few issues have had as far-reaching consequences as the development of the Christian holy day, Sunday. Every seven days, from the early middle ages, the Christian world has engaged in some kind of change in behaviour, ranging fromparticipation in a simple worship service to the cessation of every activity which could conceivably be construed as work. An important text associated with this process is the so-called Sunday Letter, fabricated as a letter from Christ which dropped out of heaven. In spite of its obviously spurious nature, it was widely read and copied, and translated into nearly every vernacular language. In particular, several, apparently independent, translations were made into Old English. Here, the six surviving Old English copies of the Sunday Letter are edited together for the first time. The Old English texts are accompanied by facing translations, with commentary and glossary, while the introduction examines the development of Sunday observance in the early middle ages and sets the texts in their historical, legal and theological contexts. The many Latin versions of the Sunday Letter arealso delineated, including a newly discovered and edited source for two of the Old English texts. DOROTHY HAINES gained her PhD from the University of Toronto, where she is currently an instructor of Old English.

This book is about the priority of praise and worship in spirit and truth. Jesus reveals to us in John 4:24 that, God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. In this conversation with a lowly and rejected Samaritan woman, He brought us to a new understanding of how we are to worship God, our creator and Father. Not just in a certain place or with certain animal sacrifices but with a heart full of love and devotion. Jesus was initiating a new era of human relationship with God. He was restoring the concept of man to once again have a personal and intimate relationship with God through worship. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, the only atonement for sin was to shed the blood of an animal and place the carcass on an altar to be consumed by fire. This act of bloodshed represented humility, sorrow and tribute to the One who created all things and is greater than all things that were created. From the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, the Bible has one central theme: God desiring to restore His relationship with humankind that He had with Adam and Eve in the Garden. From Genesis three to the end of the book of Revelation, the Bible message is all about God renewing the relationship He had with His special creation, man. Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree. We read of this account in Genesis 3:6-7. Through disobedience, they sinned and the result was separation from God. Both were cast from this garden of paradise and away from the presence of the Father. God had told them that the day they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would die. From that point on, man contaminated the holy relationship between God and himself. One of the unique things we see about the creation is that God always created a perfect environment for everything He created. When He created the fish, He also created the water. Water, of course, is the optimum environment for the fish. Without water, a fish will soon die. The same is true for the birds and flying animals. God created the air and atmospheric pressure so the birds could spread their wings and fly. Without the air, the birds could never be what the Creator intended for them to be. They could never do what He intended for them to do. Consider the land animals. Without the fields and forests, the beasts could not sustain their life. Each one has its own particular habitat designed especially for its optimum existence. The same is true for man. When God created Adam, He also created the Garden of Eden. God placed man in the garden because it was the most suitable place for the man to exist. This garden was special because it was holy; it was the place where God manifested His presence. God requires holiness before He manifests His presence. The optimum place for man is in God s presence. In the presence of God, man has the ability to live forever. God never planned for man to die. His plan has always been for man to share eternity with Him. The Lord designed man to live forever. In the presence of the Father, there is life forevermore. God has been trying constantly to find a way to get the relationship back. We see throughout the Scriptures that worship is God s highest priority and that worship is the avenue to the heart of God. The Lord s desire is seen in Exodus 20:3-6: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Praise and worship is the willful act that allows us to realize fellowship, audience, communion and companionship with God. Before the Lord took the children of Israel into the land of promise, He told Moses to bring them to Mount Sinai to offer sacrifices and worship Him on that mountain. The only examples of worship the children of Israel had were the examples they had seen in Egypt. Their previous captors, the Egyptians, worshiped animals, celestial bodies, ancestors, idols they had created and creatures that lived in or around the Nile River. The rituals of worship that the Egyptians performed were unacceptable to the God of creation. Through Moses and Aaron, God had to teach His people the proper and appropriate way to worship and praise Him. It was on Mount Sinai that God gave instructions to Moses on how to create an environment for His holy presence. It was in and around the Tabernacle of Moses that God revealed His presence by fire at night and a cloud by day. To serve God, is to worship Him. If you are not a worshiper, you cannot enter into the presence of God. If you are not a worshiper, you cannot create an environment for the presence of God and you will never know Him. His desire is that we know Him. We were created to praise and worship Him and to fellowship with Him. God desires purity in each one of us. It is in our worship experience where we realize that purity allows us to come in contact with God. This knowledge of His holiness is why God desires each one of us to worship Him. The saving grace offered by Jesus allows us entrance into the Lord s presence; yet, worship is the key to that personal relationship with God the Father."

Sacrifice dominated the religious landscape of the ancient Mediterranean world for millennia, but its role and meaning changed dramatically in the fourth and fifth centuries with the rise of Christianity. Daniel Ullucci offers a new explanation of this remarkable transformation, in the process demonstrating the complexity of the concept of sacrifice in Roman, Greek, and Jewish religion.
The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice challenges the predominant scholarly model, which posits a connection between so-called critiques of sacrifice in non-Christian Greek, Latin, and Hebrew texts and the Christian rejection of animal sacrifice. According to this model, pre-Christian authors attacked the propriety of animal sacrifice as a religious practice, and Christians responded by replacing animal sacrifice with a pure, ''spiritual'' 'worship. This historical construction influences prevailing views of animal sacrifice even today, casting it as barbaric, backward, and primitive despite the fact that it is still practiced in such contemporary religions as Islam and Santeria.
Rather than interpret the entire history of animal sacrifice through the lens of the Christian master narrative, Ullucci shows that the ancient texts must be seen not simply as critiques but as part of an ongoing competition between elite cultural producers to define the meaning and purpose of sacrifice. He reveals that Christian authors were not merely purveyors of pure spiritual religion, but a cultural elite vying for legitimacy and influence in societies that long predated them. The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice is a crucial reinterpretation of the history of one of humanity's oldest and most fascinating rituals.

""Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world "" (John 1:29)
No work of modern literature can usher you so powerfully and intimately into the Savior's heart like "The Day I Was Crucified."
Master storyteller, Gene Edwards (author of Divine Romance) recounts the harrowing scene of Calvary as if the crucifixion narrative was being told by Jesus Himself.
In this book, you will... Encounter the depths of God's unfathomable love as you walk side by side with Jesus during His final moments on Earth. Live in new levels of thankfulness as you come face to face with the full measure of what Jesus carried to the Cross on your behalf. Take an unforgettable journey, where the heartache of the Cross and victory of the Resurrection have never been more real to you. Step into history's most powerful and defining moment as you gaze upon the Lamb of God with new eyes.

The popular Unity minister who authored the acclaimed Discover the Power Within You offers a non-theological, non-ritualistic guide to prayer for contemporary seekers of oneness, guidance, and self-regulation.

In Seven Words of Christmas, bestselling author and pastor Robert Morris explains each word of prophecy: an inspired utterance of a prophet, the words of God through man. He illustrates the story of Jesus surrounding the word, and applies the prophecy to our modern lives.

Find the words of:

• Salvation through Zacharias,
• Favor through Mary,
• Blessing through Elizabeth,
• Guidance through Joseph,
• Joy through the Shepherds,
• Redemption through Anna, and
• Peace through Simeon.

How can children 'develop' spiritually and how do their teachers know when 'development' has occurred? This volume traces the roots and growth of school worship and spiritual development from Victorian times and earlier through the 1960s and beyond in order to see how we have reached the present situation. The subject is examined in various contexts: its historical and cultural background; politics and legislation; philosophy and values; curriculum development. The book addresses the problem of how to define spiritual development and the contentious issue of compulsory school worship. It offers new insights and a thesis for the way forward.

This omnibus edition brings together Phillip Keller's three devotional classics, A Shepherd Looks and the 23rd Psalm, A Shepherd Looks at the Good Shepherd, and A Shepherd Looks at the Lamb of God. As a shepherd, Phillip Keller knew what it was to protect a vulnerable flock on a daily basis. The special skills of a shepherd demanded compassion, care, and guidance. His practical experience provides a wellspring of profound spiritual insight, reflected in these timeless meditations on the most famous psalm of all, on the relationship between the Good Shepherd and his sheep, and on the sacrificial role of Christ the Lamb of God.

This book delineates the individualist "interpretation problem" that has long beset Protestant biblical interpretation, and engages theological resources that could serve to move beyond it. Lauren Smelser White argues that readers of Scripture-specifically those who long to submit their lives to God's transforming Word, which they believe the Bible discloses-ought to reckon with the participatory role that human bodies (corporeal and corporate) play in producing revelation's norms. Such a reckoning need not entail giving up on Scripture delivering the life-changing address of a divine Other. In support of that claim, White distills a picture of revelation as a divine-human discursive encounter: a process wherein our hermeneutic constructions are incorporated into the Word's self-disclosure, and whereby interpreters who embrace this venture in vulnerability may experience graced transformation. The work concludes by proposing that this "Christomorphic" interpretation process is analogous to a mother's embodied responsiveness in caring for her child. Such a hermeneutic paradigm suggests distinctive commitments from communities who desire to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in interpretive acts.

The history of the Eastern liturgical rituals reveals the variety and splendour of the world of the Christian Orient, and the profundity of its theological thought. The ritual bears witness to the deep impact these liturgies made on the Mediterranean cultures and societies of Late Antiquity. Gabriele Winkler, a specialist in Oriental liturgies and Armenian studies, here explores the beginnings and early development of these rituals in their historical, philological, and doctrinal context. Her work elucidates the interdependence of the Syriac, Greek, and Armenian cultures; it also demonstrates the interest of this material for the religious and political history of the era.

Christians sing because we are people of hope. Yet our hope is unlike other kinds of hope. We are not optimists; nor are we escapists. Christian hope is uniquely shaped by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and by the promise of our own future resurrection. How is that hope both expressed and experienced in contemporary worship? In this volume in the Dynamics of Christian Worship series, pastor, theologian, and songwriter Glenn Packiam explores what Christians sing about when they sing about hope and what kind of hope they experience when they worship together. Through his analysis and reflection, we find that Christian worship is crucial to both the proclamation and the formation of Christian hope. The Dynamics of Christian Worship series draws from a wide range of worshiping contexts and denominational backgrounds to unpack the many dynamics of Christian worship-including prayer, reading the Bible, preaching, baptism, the Lord's Supper, music, visual art, architecture, and more-to deepen both the theology and practice of Christian worship for the life of the church.

The subject of this volume is that of the establishment and embedding in the Tuscan countryside, and especially round Florence, of the new forms of piety propagated above all by the Mendicant orders. The volume brings together Professor de La Ronciere's major articles on this topic, both detailed research studies and syntheses. Against the background of existing religious attitudes, he aims to describe the many new forms of pastoral activity and structures that were instituted, and to provide a picture of what the religious side of their life really meant to these communities. The final articles extend this analysis to include the city of Florence itself, examining the role of the confraternities there and the religious views of its merchants, its socio-economic elite. Ce volume a pour sujet l'etablissement et l'enracinement de nouvelles formes de piete propagees surtout par les ordres mendiants en pays toscan et, plus particulierement, aux alentours de Florence. Le volume rassemble les articles les plus importants du professeur de La Ronciere sur ce sujet; A la fois etudes de recherches detaillees et de synthese. C'est sur cet arriere-plan d'attitudes religieuses en existence, qu'il tente de decrire les nombreuses formes nouvelles d'activites et de structures pastorales qui furent instaurees dans ces communautes et ce que signifiait pour elles le cAte religieux de leurs vies. Les derniers articles etendent cette analyse A la ville de Florence elle-mAme, en y examinant le rAle des confreries et le point de vue religieux de l'elite socio-economique qu'etaient ses marchands.

The studies by Cyrille Vogel (1919-1982) collected here provide a detailed exposition of the penitential system of the Latin Church and its evolution during the Middle Ages. They complement in this way the general treatment of his books and document the stages of the system's development - from the early forms of Late Antiquity, to the tariffed system that emerged in the early Middle Ages, and its eventual replacement by the practices of modern times. The work is based on the systematic exploitation and analysis of all available sources, archeological as well as literary and hagiographic, and on careful attention to their dating; access to this store of material will now be facilitated by the detailed indexes to the present volume. Les etudes de Cyrille Vogel (1919-1982) rassemblees ici, sont un expose detaille du systeme penitenciaire de l'Eglise Latine et de son evolution au cours du moyen Acge. Elles viennent ainsi en complement de ses ouvrages et documentent les differents stades du developpement de ce systeme - des premieres formes de penitence non-reiterable durant l'antiquite tardive, au systeme tarifaire qui fit surface au debut du moyan-Acge, jusqu'aux pratiques modernes qui finirent par le remplacer. Cet ouvrage repose sur l'exploitation et l'analyse systematique de l'ensemble des sources disponibles, archeologiques ainsi que litteraires et hagiographiques, et sur une attention minutieuse quand aux dates qui leur ont ete assignees; l'acces A cette source de documentation sera dorenavant facilite par les indexes detailles contenus dans le present volume.