Commandment Eight

Low attendance again, but it really didn't spoil the fun! To illustrate "thou shalt not steal," we used the story of Zaccheus. How coming to know Jesus made him decide not to steal anymore. I embroidered the story rather elaborately to draw it out & get more kids directly involved. Had him sitting at his tax table & someone coming up & asking how much tax they owed. He (she) consulted the local income tax table and determined it should be three pieces of silver. A sign was held up to this effect while Zaccheus put finger to his lips, and then said to the hapless taxpayer: "Four pieces of silver." We said, the people knew what was going on, but what could they do about it? If someone dared to call him on it (we had someone come do this), he could call out the soldiers & have them arrested (two kids with swords haul the person off), and they'd have to pay at least twice as much to get out of jail!

Well, then one day nobody is coming to pay taxes, how come? Hm, there's a big crowd over there—Jesus is in town! Zaccheus tries to push through the crowd to see him, but not only is he very short, no one likes him so all are determined to make it difficult. So he climbs this tree…

Jesus stops and asks to come to his home for dinner. So Zaccheus invites a bunch of his tax collector friends, and they all sit around a table eating crackers, with Zaccheus sitting next to Jesus. Then Zaccheus bangs on his water glass and gets up & announces he will not steal from anyone again, and in fact will pay back whatever he has stolen. Jesus congratulates him and blesses him.

On the theme of "stealing," we had each child go out of the room one at a time; each time we "stole" a different person from the group and had him/her go into yet another room. Then the player had to come out & guess who had been stolen. This was a new one, and fun. Craft was a work sheet titled "what has been stolen?" with various pairs of drawing with one part missing in the second drawing of each set—a wheel on a car, a spoon at a table setting, etc. Relatively easy, but it was about time for an easy craft, I think!