Do you laugh at yourself? I often find myself chuckling away about trivial things. My sensitivity to silliness is fairly fine-tuned these days, as I forget so much and use much effort noticing either the big picture or the tiny details of the world around me. Rarely both at once. I make many silly mistakes every day and given the choice between laughing and crying, I think finding the funny side is usually healthier.

Recently I prepared some ‘out of context’ visuals for someone’s birthday and I thought it would be fun to share them here. Bear in mind that I do study and teach the Bible and how not to use it out of context. A good way to consider this is to deliberately take verses out of context and wrap them up in free images (Pixabay). This set has a particular theme. Maybe I should do some more with different themes in future.

There is a serious side of course – it should become evident that it is easy to take anything out of context with the appropriate visual and that we should keep our brains engaged when presented with statements of any sort – but mostly this was just for fun. I hope you like them, and do comment if you’d like me to prepare any on another particular theme.

Photo descriptions:
1. ‘Find someone who plays well and bring him to me’, from 1 Samuel 16:17, on a silhouette of an electric guitarist at sunset
2. ‘Do not fret…’, from Psalm 37:1, on a high angle view of a bass guitar’s neck (with frets)
3. ‘Whoever practises…will be called great…’, from Matthew 5:19, on a bass guitar lying on a wooden floor
4. ‘What’s the meaning of all the noise in the city?’ from 1 Kings 1:41, on a crowd at a rock concert waving their arms
5. ‘And the sound was heard far away’ from Ezra 3:13, on a view of a musician on stage from behind, showing their feet, cables, pedal, laptop, foldback speakers.