OTHER PROJECTS
harmony of the gospels.com
I've always considered myself a student of the scriptures. My dad is a gospel scholar and passed on his love of the scriptures to me. He took us to Israel when I was 14, and I completely fell in love with the Holy Land, its history, and its people. In 2000, we went back, that time with my husband. And in the summer 2023, we were able to take all our kids, and they too fell in love with the land of Israel. To say that Israel is my favorite place on earth is not an exaggeration. I even titled one of my original piano pieces "Jerusalem."
I've taught the gospel for many years in my church, including 9+ years teaching seminary. In all my studies, I've desperately searched for a way to read the Four Gospels chronologically, verse-by-verse. Like the last 24 hours of Christ's mortal life? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all give different bits and pieces, but I couldn't find it laid out how I wanted to study it: side-by-side, verse-by-verse, in chronological order.
15 years ago, I started building it in an Excel spreadsheet. Each book got its own column. Needless to say, it took a LONG time. But once I finished, I wanted to share what I had in case others wanted to read it in the same format. But it's too long and too cumbersome to put in book form.
So the harmonyofthegospels.com website was born.
I started using it immediately in my studies, and it does indeed help me to read things side by side. :)
But that wasn't enough. I wanted to study all the scriptures chronologically. For example, I attended a bible study with a friend, and we'd jump back and forth between the book of Acts and the Pauline letters. What a cool way to study Paul's life, right? But when I went back to study the book of Acts a few years later, I found myself scrambling to remember which letters matched which parts of the story.
That's when I expanded the website.
With lots of studying, comparing resources, making changes, and doing my own digging into archeology and secular history, I've created this website to include the entire:
All in chronological order.
Or at least as chronological as I could manage since the scriptures aren't meant to be historical books. They're spiritual. A lot of times, details aren't given about when a particular book was written (I'm looking at you, book of Joel). So this is the best I could do.
But I love it! And I hope you will too.
It's incredible to read about King David escaping Saul and then immediately read the psalms he wrote while hiding in the desert. Or one of the craziest timelines I came across is the 40 years leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC, which is covered in the following books: 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Nahum, Habbakkuk, 1 Nephi, Daniel, and Ezekiel, with a few psalms thrown in. That's a lot of perspectives that are amazing to study as a group. And as I mentioned, the most important for me—and what started this project—is reading the Savior's mortal ministry side-by-side, verse-by-verse. Here's one example from the website on His baptism:
In addition to the scriptures, I have also included a general timeline and list of main people in the scriptures, including links to references so you can study more about them. I also added in links to the Bible videos series. I plan to include places mentioned in the scriptures next.
NOTE: The website is best viewed on a desktop, although it can be viewed on mobile.
Anyway, if you can't tell, I'm very passionate about this project. So if it sounds like something that might interest you, check it out and let me know what you think! :)
MAIN PAGES:
play the hymns
I started a YouTube channel to demonstrate how to play different hymns on the piano. This is still a work in project, and I have many more hymns to go, but if you're interested, you can check it out here.
fabulous flowers album
A few years back, my friend Rebecca Behrends asked me to accompany her for her violin album of original pieces based on flowers. I loved working with her on this project, and her songs and beautiful. You can listen to them here:
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AUDIO: Spotify | Amazon Music
