I'm preparing to preach this Sunday on David's ascension to the throne in Israel (2 Samuel 5-7). There are some great stories and some great theological insights in this part of the Bible -- so I'm really enjoying the process of developing the text for my message.

But textual preparation is not the only part of message preparation for me.

Because of my background in visual communications, I tend to consider the images that I use during my teachings to be nearly as important as the words that I use. I find that the work of Rembrandt van Rijn is often as valuable a study companion as that of Matthew Henry. So whenever I'm working on a message, I'm simultaneously developing a Word document and a PowerPoint presentation. I realize that some people may not care that much about the imagery associated with a sermon, but the visual reinforcement is that important to me. And besides, there's such a great artistic history of biblical imagery, too, that it seems almost silly not to take advantage of these resources in preaching.

The search for the perfect images to accompany the words of my sermon often takes a lot of time and energy. I've used Google Images, or Flickr Photos, or the excellent on-line resources of the Rijksmuseum, and I've learned how to craft my search queries in such a way that they yield maximum results. Still, I've recently discovered one particularly useful website, developed by a Norwegian school-teacher, which I've found to be particularly helpful in finding biblical imagery.

The site is called Biblical Art on the WWW, and I highly recommend it to anyone who preaches or prepares visual accompaniment to teachings from the Bible.

The site is searchable by Biblical Text, Biblical Subject, Artist, or Word -- and it's crazy the breadth of imagery that can be accessed through this site. It includes everything from illustrations to children's Bibles... to the classic Gustave Doré etchings (which you have probably seen numerous times, without realizing who it was that created those images)... to works by the Italian Renaissance masters... to works by Rembrandt van Rijn and Marc Chagall (two of my personal favorites)... to images from Medieval illuminated manuscripts (which I think are especially cool)! All three of the images within this post were drawn from this site (as only a very small, representative sampling of the offerings), and all three are representative of themes that I'm covering in my message this Sunday.

Pretty cool, isn't it?

The only way the site could get better, I think, would be to include images from stained glass windows -- which I also find to be especially beautiful for electronic projection in a church setting -- but even without this added touch, I've been especially pleased with this internet resource, so I figured I would pass it along.