This year my A to Z challenge is about Christmas, a major festival in the Christian Church. Another major festival is Easter, which I wrote about for the A to Z Challenge in 2020.
Rejoice is a word very much associated with Christmas. The song of Mary in Luke 1:46-55 has her spirit rejoicing. The shepherds were given news of great joy by the angel of the Lord. They visited the baby Jesus in Bethlehem and returned glorifying and praising God for all that they had seen. That is surely another way of saying they rejoiced.
My A to Z challenge posts about important words in the Bible included rejoice.
Although my A to Z posts are on the theme of Christmas, in the western world we are now in the season of Easter. Resurrection Sunday (or Easter Day) was on Sunday. This is Easter week – a time to rejoice.
While this year’s A to Z badges by Anjela Curtis honour the late Jeremy Hawkins, I hope that my posts about Christmas honour Jesus Christ, ‘who was and is and is to come’. Revelation 1:4
This year for the Blogging from A to Z in April Challenge I have chosen a single word for each letter of the alphabet. Each of these words is important in the Bible. I am including a story in each post. Links from biblical references go to Bible Gateway. A search of the Bible for the word love also counts loved, lovely and loves. From the NKJV there are 267 references in the Old Testament and 237 in the New Testament, which is much shorter. Love features strongly in the New Testament.
To jump to the story The disciple John tells of a memorable dayclick here.
Last year in the A to Z Challenge I suggested that the Easter story is the greatest story about love ever told. This year Easter day (Resurrection Day) was celebrated on Sunday 4 April in the west. It will be celebrated on Sunday 2 May by the Eastern Orthodox Christians.
The Bible includes stories about love within families, romantic love, God’s love and (in the New Testament) how love is acted out between believers.
Here are some links to passages about love in the New Testament:
It was quite unusual for the Master to take a few of us apart from the rest of the twelve disciples. On what started out as an ordinary day, with people coming to us to be healed, he called three of us to one side and led us up a mountain. There was Simon Peter and my brother James. We weren’t known as the quietest disciples, but that day we didn’t know what to say.
At the top of the mountain the Master began to look quite different from usual. His face shone and his clothes looked whiter than anything I have ever seen. It was as if light was coming from them. Then we saw Moses and Elijah talking with him.
Peter always had to say something.
‘Lord, it is good that we are here. Would you like me to build three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah?’
While he was speaking a bright cloud came and hid the Master, Moses and Elijah from our view. Then we heard a voice from the cloud.
‘This is my Son, whom I love and with whom I am pleased. Listen to him!’
We were terrified and fell to the ground. Then we felt his gentle hand as he told us to get up. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
The three of us were alone with Jesus on the mountain top.
As we came down from the mountain, he told us not to tell anyone what we had seen until after the Son of Man had been raised from the dead.
We were puzzled about many things. We asked him why the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first. He replied that Elijah had already come, but not been recognised. He had been treated just as people wished and the same would happen to the son of Man.
We realised he was speaking about John the Baptiser, who had been killed. Later we linked what we had heard on the mountain to Jesus’ baptism by John, when there was also a voice from heaven.
We didn’t have more chance to talk as Jesus had to help the other disciples straight away; there was a difficult healing they had not managed on their own. We kept his secret until after he had died and been raised form the dead.
Moses received the Law whereas Elijah and John the Baptiser were prophets, so this was an endorsement of Jesus’ statement that he was fulfilling the Law and the prophets.
My retelling of this story of the transfiguration is based on Matthew 17: 1-23
My challenge is to write a poem, of any style, in which one or more of the paint chip words and phrases is used as a metonymy. You could write rhyming couplets or crazy free verse or a beautiful sonnet.
The paint chip words and phrases at your disposal are gauze, sagebrush, looking glass, rabbit hole, quicksilver, Plymouth Rock, and mountain town.
While I appreciate that the challenge is to use one or more of these words and phrases as a metonym – representing something else, I was not inspired to construct a poem in that way. (Metonymy is the use of metonyms.)
I noticed that rabbit hole and looking glass are connected with Lewis Carroll’s Alice, who had adventures in Wonderland (accessed via a rabbit hole) and through the looking-glass. Lewis Carroll’s real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was a mathematician with a sense of fun.
My poem is just for fun rather than a serious attempt at using the prompt. If you haven’t read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-glass, I thoroughly recommend them. I saw a film of Through the looking-glass, which did not bear much resemblance to the book!
Failed metonymy
A mathematician named Charles Wrote fiction appealing to girls. His books about Alice Were read in the Palace, But Alice did not have curls.
The young girl mentioned above Had a dream – the poor love. Down a rabbit hole Went this young soul. A dodo was there not a dove.
In the next book Charles wrote Alice’s looking-glass he smote. Through she went to a land, Where adventures were planned. A story was told – take note!
As this post is scheduled for Easter Sunday I wish all my readers a Happy Easter. You are warmly invited to check out the rest of my blog and especially my posts for the Blogging from A to Z in April Challenge, which has just begun. (My earlier posts may also be found using the << at the bottom of the post.)
Sue's Trifles 