Breakfast with Jesus

 I missed posting last week, but since this past Sunday was just a farewell party for Grace as she leaves for a six-month home assignment, there’s at least no catching-up to do!

We didn’t do this story the first time around, but needed to squeeze in something between Easter and the farewell so that we wouldn’t start a new unit and then immediately interrupt it.

So: the story.  Jesus has already died & risen, but has not yet ascended to heaven.  His disciples were feeling a little confused.  They were so excited when He rose, and they thought they would spend all their time with Him like they did before, but now it seems they hardly ever see Him.  So a bunch of them are sitting around wondering what to do.  Finally, toward evening (turn off the lights), Peter says, “I’m going to go fishing!” and the rest decidd to go with him.  So they all get into the boat (lined up single file) and row out to deep water (rowing motions and they were supposed to all walk backward, but no one rows around here, though they do watch the Dragon-boat racers paddling, so they didn’t get the backward part).  They get to deep water and throw out their net (a large hula hoop strung like a spider web), but when they pull it back in, it is empty.  They try this a couple more times in different directions, still no catch.  Finally, toward morning (turn lights back on) they start rowing back to shore.  As they near the shore, a man calls out to them, “Did you catch enough to eat?” (The Chinese translation mentions fish to eat rather than just fish, which I found fascinating…) They say no and he suggests that they throw the net out on the right side of their boat.  They do, and suddenly a whole bunch of (paper) fish start leaping into the net(thrown by the story spectators)!  When Peter sees this, he knows it has to be Jesus.  He’s so excited, he jumps into the water (one jump) and swims to shore (swimming motions) where he hugs Jesus.  The rest of the disciples row back with the full net.

Jesus already has a pan of fish frying on a fire, but he tells them to add some more, and invites them to have breakfast with him.  Underneath the paper fish are a whole bunch of “S’more” flavored goldfish crackers, so everyone enjoyed their breakfast very much.  (The moms had never seen these before and thought I made them myself.  I’m not THAT dedicated!) 

The disciples are feeling a little embarrassed—they had totally forgotten their identity as disciples and went back to their old jobs.  Here is Jesus not scolding them but actually helping them catch fish, and then feeding them breakfast!  Peter tells Jesus he is embarrassed.  Jesus says, don’t worry, just take care of each other in the same way (an extremely abbreviated version of Jesus telling Peter three times to feed His sheep, but I just felt like mixing fish & sheep metaphors in one story was too much).  All the disciples salute Jesus and say “Yes, Sir!” (from one of our favorite choruses).  Peter remembers how the first time they had a huge catch of fish like this, Jesus had said He would have them catch men instead.  Jesus says, “I will make you fishers of men” and they all do “Yes, Sir!” again.

Yes, I know, Jesus didn’t talk about being fishers of men in John 21, but it does hearken back to that first large catch, and I wanted to bring out this truth during the adult Bible study.  Our game also illustrated the concept of fishing for men.  We chose one person as Jesus.  He began walking around the room and tapped someone. That person had to fall in behind him, hands on shoulders, and follow him for another round.  Then the new person had to tap someone else.  That person did not join the end of the line, but instead, since he was called to follow Jesus, he got in between the first “disciple” and Jesus in line.  We continued this way, always adding the new person as second in line, until we were all marching in a long “dragon.”  Nobody dropped out, it was 

great!

 











For craft, everyone got three different fish (already cut out) to color—the front and back of each.  Then they glued them to clothespins so we could hang them on a long string and display our colorful, plentiful catch of fish!