The Friend at Midnight

This was a shorter and simpler story than some. We have two foldaway cots in a storeroom at the dorm/church, so to start out we introduced this fellow and his wife, and his two (doll) children, who were ready for bed. They set up the cots, boy on one cot, girl on the other, children in between and all covered with a large blanket. Then we introduced his friend who would like to go to bed herself, but couldn’t because another friend (two friends; the one wouldn’t cooperate without her mom accompanying her) had just arrived after a long journey (two trips around the room). Were they hungry? Yes. So since she had nothing in the house to serve them, she went to her neighbors’ for help. Of course in the parable it’s the husband who does all the interaction with the persistent knocker, but our “husband” was enjoying the nap break too much, so our “wife” (the drama queen) did all the talking, and played it up quite well. But of course eventually got up and got some bread for the knocker.

What kind of game requires persistence? A tug of war! If you give up & stop pulling, your team loses!

For craft we made hourglasses out of cut-up & taped-together water bottles. I wouldn’t try and boil an egg by them, but they were fun to play with anyway!

Bible study was interesting. Trying to get them to imagine how they would react in the sleeping friend’s shoes was a little hard. “Wouldn’t happen. They could just go to 7-11.” Then when I asked if anyone knew why Jesus told this parable, the immediate response was: “To teach us that we should help friends in need even if it’s inconvenient.” So if we learned nothing else, we learned that Jesus was trying to teach us to be persistent in prayer. We used an object lesson as part of the Bible study. We re-wrote the parable, having one of the women come and knock on the door and ask for three loaves of bread. I said, okay, hang on…went and got a basket and put three small rolls in it. Looked at it and said, if her friends are hungry, this bread isn’t going to be enough. Let me at least put some butter in with it…and some jelly. Let’s see, what else? Here are some leftover chicken wings from last night…they should have some fruit…oh, and my wife bakes such delicious cookies, let me get some of those…okay! At this point we had the woman at the door say,” I give up, she’s not going to give me anything,” and leave. So then I go to the door with this basket of goodies and—hey where did she go? Point being, sometimes answers to prayer take time because God is planning something better than we imagine. Don’t give up or you might miss out!