That was the name of the Christmas story I wrote for December 23rd and 24th. It was also how I felt after writing and presenting it. The extent of Christ’s humiliation in the incarnation and his heart for the lost was strongly reinforced in interpreting Philippians 2:5-11 in story form.A third word to describe the feeling might be ‘insane’. As those of you who were there know, the story was supported by a video track set in Dickensian London. The creation of that 40 minutes of video was an incredible task that I in no way understood when I set out to do it.
Right up front let me say that it would have been impossible without the help of my oldest daughter Bethany, who is home for a few ‘quiet’ weeks after graduating with her Masters on December 14th. Thanks again, Bethany!
But even with Bethany’s help, we came down to the wire on preparation of the video for both services, and probably as a result ended up with several glitches in presentation. I apologize for those and hope you will watch the video version that will go up in a little while, which will be narrated ‘in studio’.
For those of you who have asked, we created the video track using scenes from four different Dickens movies, all done by the BBC. The four movies were : David Copperfield, Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House, and Oliver Twist, in order by decreasing quantity of clips used. Some of the scenes were taken from one movie or another, but most were spliced together from two or even more of the movies. I’d guess there are about six hundred splices in the forty minutes of the story.
As far as recommending Dickens movies goes, it appears to us that David Copperfield and Our Mutual Friend are the best of the lot. The others are probably fine stories, but did not seem as visually compelling as these two. We’re planning on watching the whole of Our Mutual Friend sometime during the holidays.
By the way, I researched the copyright implications of what I was doing and came to the conclusion that this use is fair use under the copyright laws. For a good discussion of these issues see this blog
I hope you enjoyed the story, and I hope you and your families have a Merry Christmas and that the wonder of Christ’s incarnation touches your heart.
