Hallelujah for These Children!

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I had to post this wonderful video from the Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat 5th Grade students in Quinhagak (Kuinerraq in the Yup'ik language), Alaska (USA).  These are Yup'ik people (you probably would call them Eskimos, but they do not like that word).  There are about 16,900 speakers of Yup'ik, which is as different from its sister language,Yupik, as Spanish is from French.  The word Yup'ik comes from "yuk" = "person" plus "Pik" = "real."

Quinhagak is a fishing and canning village and had a permanent population of 555 as of the 2000 census.  The name means "new river channel."  The village has been proven to have existed since at least 1000 AD/CE.

These are poor but proud, hard-working people.  From the video, it looks like almost the entire village helped in the production of this wonderful statement.  I especially love the girls spinning at 2:04 and the very cold girl at 2:32.

The Sign of the Fish

The Sign of the Fish?  Didn't I mean The Sign of the Cross?  The sign of the fish was one of the very early symbols used by Christians.  The obvious reference is to the biblical stories recorded in Matthew 14:13-21, 15:32-39, Mark 6:31-44, 8:1-9, Luke 9:10-17, and John 6:5-15 where Jesus fed thousands using only a few fish and loaves of bread.  Also, several of Jesus' first disciples were fishermen and He promised them that they would become "fishers of men." (Matthew 4:19, Mark 1:17)

The fish symbol was often safer to use than a cross because the Romans knew the cross symbol but most of them would totally miss the significance of a fish.  The symbol became a sort of secret code so Christians could safely recognize others whom they had not yet met.  Also, a house with a fish over the door was a "safe house," an indirect reference to the Passover. (Exodus 12:12-14)

This was not the only meaning of the fish; it was also an anagram from the first letters of the phrase Ιησούς Χριστός Θεού Υιός Σωτήρ (Greek meaning "Jesus Christ God Son Savior).  The first letters of the five words spell out ΙΧΘΥΣ (Icthys, Greek for "fish,'" from which we derive the English word "ichthyology," the study of fish.)