This year our special focus was on the Christmas carol Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, in some ways one of the oldest carols of all. Here you can read all the posts in order, and check out a few other related resources.
100 year old arrangement of Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence (1921)
This month is a bit of a cheat, because I choose pictures from two days – so, around this time, 10 years ago, in Lashburn, SK, we were having fun at Grandpa and Grandma Cottrill’s house!
First picture: Nathanael playing ball with Grandma. Second picture: Hannah and Nathanael making cake-in-a-mug with Grandpa (a dangerous skill to learn). Click each picture for a larger version.
If you’ve ever been involved in planning a Sunday service, you may have noticed that, once in a while, a theme emerges in the service that you weren’t really planning on. Or, maybe the songs fit with the sermon in a very unexpected way.
“The Best Bible Study Tool” translated version of my Dad’s booklet
Or, sometimes in the Bible studies and conversations that are going on in a local church, it starts to look like God really wants to emphasize certain things, even though you weren’t planning to focus on them.
One of the themes that has been emerging over the last little while in our church here in Ixtapaluca Mexico is our personal study of the Bible.
Our hermeneutics course is ending this week, but one of the last lessons had some practical tips for personal devotions. It turned out that personal devotions was also the theme of the Bible study that week, followed by how to understand the Bible (this past Saturday) and how to study the Bible (this coming Saturday).
My Dad used and developed a tool for his personal devotions called the Bible Card System, which I thought would be useful for the hermeneutics class. So they’ve been trying it out, and I will likely introduce it to our Bible study group and the rest of the church as well. (If you’re interested, you can read about it in English or in Spanish now.)
Of course we continue to dive into Bible study in general at church. On Sunday we continued our biblical anthropology with the theme of Family – an interesting one as we enter into a season with Children’s Day, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day (we celebrated the first one at the service yesterday). This study was all about marriage and gender among other things (and I think the adults especially wanted a few more hours to talk about it! – issues of gender, marriage, family and sexuality are of course pretty practical, especially here in 2021!).
By the way, it was a fun service (although rather eclectic!). Oscar led the service and had some special things for the kids. After the service, we had some photos of children or adults when they were younger, and had to guess who they were (not hard with Hannah and Nathanael – especially that picture of Hannah with a snowman!). Shari made up some gift bags for the kids, and a GIANT COOKIE!
Decorations up for Children’s Day on Sunday morning
But back to the sermon topic. We’re planning to do one anthropology study a month, and so far it feels like a year-long look at Genesis 1-3. You can just go deeper and deeper into those chapters, and you keep discovering more! But this week, unexpectedly, I think that a big theme that struck me was the theme of identity, and where our identity comes from.
Just to keep things interesting, this Sunday in our study of Romans we arrive at Romans 13. Ah yes, this chapter has been the source of a lot of discussion, studies and sermons in the past few months! So although we didn’t pick it because of recent world events, you can bet we’ll be talking about some of them. (In case you’re wondering where I’m coming down on some of these issues – well, I’m still studying! Maybe I’ll write some posts about it.)
I think we’ve been learning some practical things from one another as we study God’s Word. May we put it into practise in the challenging days ahead!
I hope you’ve enjoyed our exploration of It Came Upon The Midnight Clear! This is an index of all the posts. Below that, I’ve included some resources for further study.
“The Angel Appears to the Shepherds” by Philip James de Loutherbourg (courtesy Ji-Elle)
The Cyber Hymnal – lyrics, pictures of the authors, alternate tunes and languages can be found here.
The Hymns and Carols of Christmas – there’s a lot about the history of the text here. Some authors have attempted to make some verses more personal, or more Christ-centred.
My Dad spent countless hours in the study of God’s Word.
That study was expressed as he taught classes at a Bible college, or as he led a Bible study, preached, or provided counselling. But he also spent countless hours writing. Much of that writing he put online.
His online work actually focused on two topics – the Bible was one, and hymns was another.
After he passed away last August, we had to decide what to do with this online material. I finally decided to consolidate it all into one website – with the possibility of added unpublished work as well in the future. So, Wordwise Hymns and Wordwise Bible studies will be eventually all found here:
However, I am putting the material up a little at a time, which means that, Lord willing for the next few months (maybe years!), you’ll see new articles every week (currently 5x a week).
Other than updating the format, the material will be posted just as he originally wrote it.
If you’re looking for some thoughtful, Bible-based studies and articles (including answers to many questions that he received over the years – including some interesting ones like “Should I wear angel jewellery?”)), I encourage you to check out Wordwise. A series on the basics of the faith is just finishing up today (“Exploring Christianity”), and will be followed by some general articles about the church and the Christian life.
A lot of this material is in a format that could easily be used in a small group study, or printed on the back of a bulletin.
The latest articles are also currently found on the right sidebar of this site.
If you have any comments or suggestions regarding navigation and style, feel free to let me know. The site is probably not in its “final” form yet, and I’m sure there is a lot of room for improvement.
The funeral for Bob Cottrill was held on Friday the 6th of September, at 11am MDT, at the Lashburn Community Hall in Lashburn, SK, Canada (click link for address/map).
Video
Below is the video of the service, in two parts. The audio should be greatly improved from the live feed.
If you would like to follow along, you can access the music program here. The funeral program is here. Thanks so much to Daryl Ferguson for recording the video. They can be watched full screen if you like.
In Memoriam…
In lieu of flowers, or if you would simply like to send a gift in memory of Robert, the family would like to suggest:
Maidstone Grace Community Church Box 448 Maidstone, SK S0M 1M0 or… Fair Havens Ministries Online donations: http://www.fairhavens.org/donate/
