A Brave Woman

Today we introduced a woman who, like last week's character, had been suffering for a long time. This woman had had an issue of blood for 12 years. She had spent all her money on doctors, to no avail: we gave our "actress" a small purse with three coins and had her visit three different "doctors" who listened to her heart with a home-made stethoscope and/or took her temperature with a pretzel stick. She was supposed to pay each of them one of her coins but it took a considerable amount of persuasion to get her to part with them. Somehow she ended up with all three back in the purse at the end; I missed how she did that. Anyway, the first two doctors gave her medicine to drink. After drinking the first bottle, we could see that the "blood" (a long red string tucked into her belt) was still there. The second bottle, we said (just to make the story more interesting) not only didn't make the blood go away, it made her throw up. Lai Wun obliged by spitting in her sister's lap—yes, it did make the story more interesting! :-) The third doctor took her money but only shook her head sadly and said, sorry, nothing I can do for you. So by now she was desperate. Then she hears that Jesus has come to her town! She didn't dare ask Him outright for help. After all, she was "unclean," and not worthy of God's care. But, Jesus was so powerful, if she could just touch his clothes, she very well might be healed. So she threaded through the crowd, quickly touched his cloak, and ran away. She did the running away part really well. When Jesus asked who had touched Him, there was no way she was going to be persuaded to come back and tell Him who it was! So Jesus had to go and find her hiding in the corner of the room and tell her not to worry, never to think that God loved her, and that in fact she was healed because God was so pleased by her faith. So, a little different from the original story, but it worked okay.

This woman had sneaked up to Jesus to "steal" power from His body. So for our game, each child had to try to "steal" a piece of chocolate dangling on a string from "Jesus'" clothes. Our volunteer Jesus wasn't very good at dodging, so the game was a little too easy, but this did not disappoint the kids terribly!

The woman was supposed to never forget that God loved her, and we shouldn't forget either. So for craft time we made simple picture frames and wrote on the top "Jesus loves" and their names on the bottom. Then we inserted their personalized angels from the December 19^th craft time. I still had the heads leftover from the kids who hadn't come that day, so since Sally was there this time, I made her an angel while they were putting the frames together, so she had an angel too. Of course she had never seen it before and loved it! While some of the other kids were still working on their projects, Sally was gazing at hers with her chin on her hand and a radiant smile on her face. So sweet.

A Crippled Woman Healed

We took some major "poetic license" here! In order to lengthen the story & increase the participation, we added some hypothetical situations to give background to the theme of the day. First we had the "leader of the synagogue" getting ready to go to the Sabbath meeting. No cooking allowed on the Sabbath, so he had to eat a cold breakfast (a small piece of pound cake, which is considered by some to be Western breakfast food). Then before he went, he needed to make sure his cows were fed and watered. So he pumped some water with the cardboard pump leftover from the marriage at Cana & then led his two handsome cows (steers, maybe!) out to drink. Led them back to their seats & gave them some "hay". Then he could go to the synagogue.

Next we saw another family—father, mother and small son—also eat their cold breakfast and start off. But on the way they encountered a neighbor's sheep with its head caught in a fence. (I have kicked myself for not getting a picture of Sally in the fence—I'll have to ask her to do a make-up pose another day.)

Here it is:

Of course, according to the Law you must rescue a neighbor's animal in distress, so the son ran home to get a hammer & dad took the fence apart to let the sheep out, and then hammered it back together. Then they, too, go to the synagogue.

The next person we see is this woman (girl) who is bent over from the waist and unable to straighten up. She has been that way for 18 years. She is pretty lonely, because people have to practically lie on the ground to talk with her & few people do that. But she likes to go to synagogue, because she can talk to God anyway!

Today, Jesus is speaking at the meeting. Some more poetic license—He is giving a sermon on God's mercy. Everyone agrees with His wonderful message. Then He calls the crippled woman to the front and says, daughter, God wants to show you His mercy today! He lays His hands on her and she stands up straight. She begins to rejoice, but then the leader of the synagogue gives her a hard time. "If you wanted to be healed, you should come some other time, not on the Sabbath! Healing is work & shouldn't be done on the Sabbath!" But Jesus refutes this statement. Come now, He says. Weren't we just talking about mercy? Don't you show mercy to your cattle on the Sabbath, and bring them out to drink? (Synagogue leader looks embarrassed) Or if you saw your neighbor's sheep stuck in a fence on the Sabbath, wouldn't you have mercy on it and help it get free? (family looks embarrassed). God shows us mercy every single day, after all, and wouldn't He want to show mercy to this dear woman today? And give her the best Sabbath "rest" that she has had for 18 years?

The game for today was originally written to be a relay race, but it quickly became obvious that just doing the running—with hands clasping the ankles—was hard enough for almost everyone that just doing it individually, without competition, was challenge enough to make it fun!

The woman in our story stood up straight and tall for the first time in 18 years. How tall are we when we stand up straight? Craft for the day was making individual "growth charts" which were simply measuring tapes stuck to sheets of paper. Then we measured everyone. Unfortunately, I had not anticipated that we would have a new visitor this morning—a 4-year-old boy who was considerably less than 4 feet tall. The only measuring tapes I could find went up to only five feet, and we have several boys taller than that. So I had cut the tapes short, and had 20-80 cm become 120-180 cm. Everyone easily fell within this range except our new little boy, who wasn't all that thrilled to be there in the first place. Mr. Lei worked hard to figure out how to measure him anyway. Thanks Mr. Lei!

I led the Bible study which centered on the idea of mercy. I assigned "homework" which was looking for ways in the coming week to show mercy to someone who doesn't "deserve" it. We're supposed to report back this coming Sunday. Hope we will have at least some people who did the homework!

Luke 7

Since this is supposed to be starting our unit on New Testament women, the main story is meant to be the widow of Nain. But that is too short a story to make much of a drama out of, so we started with the story before it in Luke, about the healing of the centurion's servant.

First we introduced Jesus, then we divided the rest of the room into "Jews" and "Romans" who generally kept separate from one another. But there was this one Roman, whose servant was sick (centurion puts him in recliner with feet up & covers him with blanket), who had good relationships with the Jews. When he heard Jesus was in town, he asked some of his Jewish friends to ask Jesus to heal his servant. They do & he says okay & starts to go with them. But one guy runs ahead to tell the centurion that he is coming. He sends him back to Jesus to say, please, don't take so much trouble for me; your power is so great, you can just say the word and he will be healed. Jesus is impressed and says "he is healed." The servant immediately gets up and starts sweeping the floor.

Then we have some people saying: "Did Jesus really heal him, or was he going to get better anyway? And, "Well, He healed him, but He only does this for people who are important and do good works." Thus we introduce the next story that highlights both Jesus' healing power and His willingness to serve nobodies.

Jesus is walking along and sees two men coming along the road carrying a funeral bier (a board with a doll on it, covered with a blanket). Behind them walks a widow (wearing a black scarf) & no other family, so Jesus knows she is very needy. He stops the procession, pats the widow on the shoulder to comfort her, then puts his hands on the covered figure and says, sit up. The doll sits up (with help), and is given to the mother. Everyone is amazed and they sing a praise song. (The "widow," a real widow, actually, who is usually quite shy, made her doll-son dance with the music—that was cute!)

When the centurion's servant was healed, he sat up. When the widow's son was brought to life, he sat up. So of course our game was a sit-ups contest!

Some of the adults gave it a try too. They couldn't all manage sit-ups, but some could do other kinds of exercise!

Craft was more "headwork" than "handwork" this time—an English word-search with words from the widow of Nain story. The definitions were added in Chinese, but the word-find was only English. The kids do work on English in school (whether or not it's very useful), but they had a hard time with this. The parents found it fascinating though!

I liked what Bruce brought out in the Bible study time, about how the centurion asked for (and received) healing for his servant, but how Jesus raised the widow's son without her asking for anything. Many people today ask for healing and then rightly thank Jesus for it, but how often are people healed & it's also Jesus but because they didn't ask they don't guess it was He? Unfortunately we ran out of time to discuss the problem of those who ask for healing but don't receive it. I did at least try to emphasize in the closing prayer that this is a legitimate question that I wish I knew the answer to. But that we ask anyway, because who else is there to ask? Ourselves?

The Ideal Woman

The ideal woman is not I. I don't imagine the Proverbs 31 woman would have gotten behind in her posting because she wasted a couple of days moping around after her cat died.

Proverbs 31 is of course not in story form, but it still lent itself nicely to our Sunday morning program. In theory we were supposed to be in the New Testament by the New Year, but there are SO MANY Sundays before this year's unusually late Easter, that I sneaked this in.

The way we did it was to first select the number of "volunteers" needed for each verse, then have someone read the verse (or verses) before having the kids act out the scene:

vv 10-12—"she is more precious than jewels"—boy puts necklace on girl

v 13—"she seeks wool and flax and works with willing hands"—girl knits.

v 14—"she brings her food from far away"—girl goes around the room with shopping basket buying fruit from different people

v 15—"she rises while it is still night and provides food for her household…"—this was unplanned but a funny touch. Lai Wun was our star actress; she had gotten into the knitting scene as if she really knew what she was doing. Wing Yan was our next volunteer, and she did okay as far as lying down on the sleeping mat with her "husband" and then letting him sleep on while she got up. But then she was done & wouldn't set the table like she was supposed to. So Lai Wun jumps up and starts doing it for her. Well, the verse does continue "…and tasks for her servant-girls"!

v 16—"she considers a field and buys it…plants a vineyard"—girl buys box of dirt from boy and waters it

v 17—"she…makes her arms strong"—girl lifts weights

vv 18-19—"her lamp does not go out at night…her hands hold the spindle"—girl tucks boy into bed then sits up with sewing

v 20—"she opens her hand to the poor"—boy begging with tin cup, girl drops money into cup

vv 21-22—"all her household is clothed in crimson"—girl dresses boy & then herself in red jackets

v 23—"her husband is known in the city gates"—boys sit in a group, boy wearing the red jacket shakes hands with the others

v 24—"she makes linen garments and sells them"—girl goes around the room selling articles of clothing to different people

v 25—"she laughs at the time to come"—girls make remarks about cold weather/bad economy, girl says, no problem

v 26—"the teaching of kindness is on her tongue"—two boys fighting, girl breaks it up

v 27—"she…does not eat the bread of idleness"—boy sits in recliner, girl sweeps floor

vv 28-29—"her children rise up…her husband, too, and he praises her"—several people praise girl & give her a crown

vv 30-31—"give her a share in the fruit of her hands"—girl takes basket & goes around the room while people put garments, fruit & money in basket

This woman had a lot to balance! So for game time, we had a relay where the kids had to balance a tray with cups & bowls using one hand. A couple of the kids didn't get the one-hand bit right, but a couple of them insisted on doing it over and trying it one-handed, and they did it! Great job, kids!

Our craft followed verse 13—they used yarn and worked with fairly willing hands to create these pictures with it.

The adult Bible study took an interesting twist. Some of the women came to the conclusion that this woman's husband must be a lazy good-for-nothing who just let her do everything! I don't think that was supposed to be the point of this passage!