Commandment Six

An exhausting morning at Merciful Love! We had eleven kids, & eleven adults. Pretty crowded, but we still fit!

For our story, we had a condensed & slightly edited version of II Samuel 2 & 3. First we introduced Israel's first king, Saul. But because he was not loyal to God, God chose someone else to take his place, David. But because David remembered the commandment "thou shalt not kill," he was willing to wait for God's time to become king. When Saul finally died, though, some people felt that his son Ishbosheth should be the new king. One country, two kings—what happens? War! So each king chose a general from among the other kids—Joab for David, Abner for Ishbosheth.

Next we introduced Joab's little brother Asahel who wasn't very skilled in warfare but was very brave and very fast. He starts chasing Abner, who also would rather not kill such an innocent, and tries to persuade him to go chase somebody else. But Asahel doesn't listen, he catches up to Abner, & gets killed.

War drags on for a while, and finally (here's my major editing job) Ishbosheth gets impatient and accuses Abner of being lazy and useless. Abner takes offense and defects to David. Of course then Ishbosheth is in big trouble & he dies before too long. So now there's just one king, and peace in the land. Everybody's happy except—whom? Joab, of course. Not only is his little brother dead, but he has to be partners with the guy who killed him! So under the guise of "discussing business," he arranges a private chat with Abner, and kills him.

When David hears, he is angry, and explains to Joab that while killing in war is one thing, killing someone from sheer jealously & dislike is quite another. Joab "gets away with murder" by protesting that Abner was too dangerous a potential traitor. But David demonstrates that he did not condone the murder by personally arranging for Abner's burial (his being covered with a blanket, that is) and commanding everyone in the room to cry for him.

Game time: we heard in the story that in war there usually has to be killing, but wouldn't it be nice to have battles where people didn't have to die? So we battled for the championship of pillow-fighting on a low balance beam. Whoever fell off first was the loser in a double-elimination tournament, which we never quite finished with all those kids, but everyone got at least two turns. One reason we didn't finish was that everyone's balance was so good! It was really hard to get anyone to fall off the beam! In some of the contests, I had to resort to tickling (both kids at once) to speed up the process!

Craft time was horrendous. The idea was good; we said that the opposite of killing was healing, & set out to make stethoscopes out of drinking straws & a bottle cap. The problem was, you had to string this all together by getting the yarn through these drinking straws. I had done one at home and it went very easily. However, I had used the heaviest large-eyed needle in my collection, and it would fall through the straw easily, even when, as with the first straw, there were two strands of yarn to draw through. Most of the needles I had were much lighter, and it was very difficult. Either we needed heavier needles, or lighter string, which I certainly could have managed had I realized the problem. Once again, I was humbly amazed at how accepting everyone was of the mess-up. I was by far the most frustrated person of the entire group!