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?