Commandment Two

For our story about not worshipping idols, we chose the account of Daniel's three friends and the fiery furnace. Started out by re-introducing King Josiah from last week's story & recalled that God was not going to punish Judah until after he died. So now—he's died. (Gets plonked back onto chair.) God indeed punished the people with exile to Babylon. (Two guys with swords escort everyone around the room.)

The king of Babylon wasn't a humble guy like Josiah. In fact, he was so proud, he didn't want to be just respected, he wanted to be worshipped! (This is my "free" version of the Bible story, which does not actually say what the image was that the people were supposed to worship. I'm just guessing it was likely an image of the king himself.) So we dressed a second child in the same purple-tissue-paper robe and gold-paper crown as the king, and had a couple of adults lift her onto a stool. (We're short of boys these days!)

During the announcement of the "rules of worship" we played snippets of each type of musical instrument we mentioned, from a little toy keyboard. Of course then the three friends didn't bow to the idol when the bad guys played the music when the friends were near the statue. So they got thrown into the "furnace" which was one of our side bedrooms, with paper flames taped along the sides.

When the king peeked into the furnace and saw something he didn't expect, we had him tell everyone to come look. Which gave the pre-cued volunteer the chance to slip into the "furnace" from the back via the connecting bedroom—picking up a halo for himself along the way. :-)

When the king called the friends to come out, he had to sniff at them all to see if they smelled like smoke. (They didn't.)

Again, a slight poetic re-write: we ended the story with the king declaring that Yahweh was clearly the right God to worship, so we wouldn't be needing that statue anymore (pull it down).

Although unlike idols, God is invisible, He still showed His power over the flames. Just like an invisible puff of air can blow out a candle flame, right? Game time had everyone blowing up (with or without help) balloons and then aiming them at candles to try and blow them out. Most of the kids got the right idea about pointing the balloon in the right direction and letting the air out, but it was harder to convince them that they needed to let it out fast. The "slow leak" stuff didn't do the job! It was fun trying though!

For a craft we made what one of the kids called "fire popsicles." (Popsicles translate as snow sticks; so these were then "fire sticks"). Cut-down juice-boxes wrapped with "flame" paper; a hole on the bottom letting you slide a popsicle stick up & down with three cutout boys glued to the end, going in & out of the furnace. A lot of work to prepare the materials (drank a lot of juice last week!), but easy to assemble on the day & everyone liked them.