The Twenty-Four Days of Christmas: Day Five

A New Tradition

This year I am inaugurating a new tradition, Names and Titles of Jesus.  

This year I decided that I want to find all the names and titles of Jesus in the Bible.  A very ambitious project! Starting in the book of Matthew, I spent some time reading through the book and circling every name and title that I could find.  

ESV Study Bible

Then I got out my cardstock and my trusty pretty-scissors and got to work cutting strips.

 

Don't worry about all those annoying, loose little bits of paper; I'll get to that later.

Then I start writing.   On the front, I write the name or title, and on the back I write the reference.  Do you know how many times the book of Matthew uses the name, "Jesus"?  Is it redundant to write that again, and again, and again?  No, I don't think so.  On most of the strips that have the name "Jesus", I include a bigger explanation by writing that this is also "Yeshua" and that this name means, "The Lord, or YHWH, saves".  Every time a name or title occurs, it gets a separate strip of paper.  If a name occurs multiple times in one verse, it gets that many pieces of paper.  Why?  Because I want to!

Next, I toss all these strips of paper in the great big, glass, cracked, pickle crock.  I like to re-purpose things, and I like the idea that a cracked pot can still be used to proclaim the glory of God.

Finally, I take my cracked pot and place it by the front door.

And we can share them with Christmas company in hopes that this will help them to stop for just a minute or two and think about Jesus.  

Remember those annoying little bits and pieces of paper?  What are you supposed to do with those?  I keep a good supply of clear glass ornaments on hand all the time and fill them up with scraps from different projects; yarn, cloth, thread, etc.  For this project, I put the scraps of paper in them.  Thank you, Debbie Hixon!

Any time I do a project like this that I hope to share with anyone, the most important part is to pray over what I am doing.  Each of these strips were done with a prayer that God will somehow use it to help someone.

And that's our first "New Tradition".