Israel Wants a King

We introduced Samuel, whom we had already seen as an obedient young boy.  But now he is old (sprinkled baby powder on his head).  We introduced his two sons, who were not good guys like Samuel, surely not fit to judge Israel (they are pushed back into their seats).  Instead of asking God what to do about this problem, the people came up with their own solution.  They wanted to have a king, like all the other nations around them (you know, the ones of whom God said “you shall not go after their ways…”).  Everyone chants, “We want a king!  We want a king!”

Samuel thought this was a horrible idea!  He asked the people, when you tried to get the ark to win your battles for you, did that work? (no)  So why do you think a king will win your battles for you?  Who is the only one who truly gives victory? (God)  Not only that, says Samuel.  God loves you.  You think a king is going to love you?  Ha!  I’ll tell you what a king will be like!  (Introduce “king” wearing crown.)  He will take your sons to be his chariot drivers (king sits in desk chair with wheels, two boys pull the chair along by ropes).  He will make them plow his fields (one child pushes a push broom).  He will make them build a palace for himself (a couple of kids stack a bunch of stools).  He will make them be soldiers in his army (two kids fight with swords, both “die”).  He will take your daughters and make them cooks in his palace (one girl busies herself stirring in three woks).  He will make you provide food for him out of your own harvest (someone brings the king a snack from the kitchen).  You will have to tithe your herds and flocks to him (hand out two sheets of paper to two kids, one with ten cows, one with ten sheep; they have to cut one of the animals out and give it to the king).  And after all this, there is still no guarantee that having a king will give you victory over your enemies!  But the people chant again, “We want a king!  We want a king!”  Samuel is very discouraged.  He kneels to pray.  An angel in a halo comforts him and says, it is not your fault.  Let them have their king.  So he gets up and tells the people they can have a king.  Everyone cheers.  Samuel tells them to come back next week and find out who God will give them as their king!

Our game followed the theme of a king taking your sons & daughters and hauling them off.  A “king” in a crown chased the others with a big inflatable swimring.  But whoever got caught with it in this version did not have to go be a slave in the palace; he/she got to be “king” and chase the others.  We played until everyone had been caught at least once.

 If you want a king like other nations, sooner or later you’re going to want a national flag, right?  (Say yes!)  So for craft time the kids pasted the various elements of the flags of Macau, China and Israel on appropriate-colored rectangles, following the examples each got to look at.

The Ark Returns to Israel

It was not a brilliant week to forget my camera!  Our story opened with the reminder that the ark was in the hands of the Philistines.  What was inside the ark?  We looked inside for review.  Is God in there?  Nope.  As far as the Philistines were concerned, it was just a beautiful gold box—after all, they had managed to capture it, hadn’t they?  So they put it inside the temple of their god Dagon as a gift.  They closed the door of the temple (i.e., pulled a folded-up table in front of the two stools holding the ark and the little monster doll we were using as Dagon).  The next morning when they opened the door—oops, Dagon had fallen over!  Must have bumped him when they were putting the ark in there, huh.  So we stuck him down with blu-tack and closed the door again.  The next morning, they opened the door and were supposed to find him lying belly-down with this head and hands broken off.  It had worked fine the first time we did this using a cheapo plastic doll from the “dollar store.”  But this time I’d saved the dollar and used a transformer-type doll that was sitting in the toybox, from who-knows-where.  There was NO WAY I was going to be able to get the head and hands off!!  Managed to get the feet off, that was all.  Not quite so visually striking!  Sigh.

Well, besides the problem with the idol falling over, there was another mysterious problem that might or might not be related to the presence of the ark—people were breaking out in nasty tumors!  (Narrator went around marking different people’s arms with a face-paint pen).  So the people of that city decided they wanted to send the ark somewhere else.  So they did (move it to another part of the room).  Then the people there also started breaking out in tumors (more face-paint), and the rats were multiplying as well (throw toy mice into people’s laps).  So they decide they’ve got to get rid of this ark.  The way they decided to do it was to put the ark in a cart (a wheelchair) and harness two cows who had never pulled a cart before (two boys in cow horns—yes, it probably should have been girls—very cute, wanted my camera).  The idea was, if these cows pulled the cart straight back to Israel, then they would know that all these things that had happened were because of Israel’s God; if they wandered around every which way, then they could assume that everything that had happened was just coincidence.  But of course they pulled it straight back, with string tied around their waists and the arms of the wheelchair.  They returned and all Israel rejoiced and sang a praise song to God.

Our game was: can you steer the cart as straight as the cows did?  Everyone (who wanted to) got to sit in the wheelchair and drive it from one end of the room to the other.  Most of them needed help, but they mostly had the basic idea.

Then for craft we made “three-dimensional” cows from craft foam.  Hmm, I should have a photo from writing up the instructions for the leader…

You can't "use" God

I found the ark I made three years ago for this same story, in the back of the storage cupboard.  Only needed the cover re-wrapped, and the rings for the poles taped down more  securely. 

 

We introduced this story by reminding everyone of how obedient the boy Samuel was in last week’s story, and how important obedience is.  That God gave Israel a set of laws so they would know what obedience should look like.  Their “basic law” (which is the name for Macau’s mini-constitution) is the ten commandments—showed a small “stone tablet”.  Among the rewards for obedience was that God would take care of them, like He did with manna in the wilderness—showed a small jar of wafer cookies.  Since it was important for Israel to remember both God’s laws and His provision, He had them build a special box to put these things in, called a “covenant cabinet” (literal translation).  I know, this probably wasn’t expressly why God wanted this ark built, but how would YOU explain it??  The ark was brought out of a side room—oohs and ahs!—and the two items placed inside; then it was carried again out to the balcony.

Okay, so back to the time of Samuel.  Israel was constantly at war with the Philistines in those days (two sets of folks with Israeli & Palestinian flag stickers get up and fight with rubber swords). The Philistines fought bravely, and Israel had to turn and flee (the “Israelites” run & sit down, the “Philistines” high-five each other).  So the Israelites re-group and try to figure out what to do next.  What they should have done is pray for God’s blessing & guidance, right?  But instead, one guy had a “better” idea—let’s bring the ark with us into the battle with us, and then God will have to keep us safe!  So two bring the ark out on their shoulders while two more do battle with swords.  But the Philistines kill them all and run off with the ark.

To sum up the story, we asked two questions:  what did Israel learn that day?  We held up the answer: “Don’t try and use God”, and had someone write a big red check mark on it to show it was correct.  Next question: what did the Philistines learn that day?  The answer: “Yahweh is not so powerful after all”.  That’s not really true, so we had someone write a big red X on that one, and said we would see next week how the Philistines were going to learn differently.

Our game of “capture the ark” was basically London Bridge is Falling Down, only we sang, who is going to be the ark, be the ark, be the ark, who is going to be the ark that is captured.  On captured, the “drawbridge” came down and whoever was underneath got hauled away.  Played until everyone had been captured.

Three years ago we had made little arks out of cookie boxes with chopsticks for poles and little “cherubim” to stick on the top.  They were a pain to paint gold. This time I found a much nicer, easier craft design on the Danielle’s Place website, made of craft sticks, 2- rather than 3-dimensional.  It said I could print it out for “personal use” and I hope that it is okay for me to be posting these photos of the kids working on them!

 

An Obedient Boy

Just a few more months until we are finished with the second three-year cycle through our Bible stories.  I decided to do the I Samuel series before the Attributes of God series this time, so that we would have more flexibility toward the end of how many attributes to do.  So we started this week, then, with the boy Samuel in the temple.

We had previously done the story of Hannah’s prayer for a son, so we just briefly introduced her, had her kneel and pray for a son, and—voila! The boy Samuel!  She was so thankful she decided she wanted to make an offering to God of her most precious possession.  Which was, of course, Samuel.  So she takes him and introduces him to Eli, the priest.  So now he lives with Eli in the temple.  Now it’s nighttime.  Eli sits in the recliner with his feet up and is covered with a  blanket, while young Samuel lies on a towel on the floor.  Then a voice from “somewhere” calls, Samuel, Samuel!  He thinks it’s Eli and goes to ask him what he wants.  Nothing, I didn’t call you; go back to sleep.  This happens a second time, same result, Samuel lies back down on the floor.  The third time, is Eli playing tricks on him or what?  But his responsibility is not to second-guess Eli but to be obedient.  So he gets up again to check on Eli.  Finally it dawns on Eli that God is calling to Samuel, so he tells him what to say if the voice calls again.

The voice does call again, only this time embodied in a be-haloed angel.  Samuel stands up and says, speak, I am listening.  Here we skipped the part about Eli & family being punished.  Instead we just had the angel tell Samuel that because he was so obedient to both man and God, so everyone was going to be obedient to him when he grew up.

Our game centered on this theme of obedience, with each person drawing a card with a “command” on it which they were supposed to obey.  Mostly simple & fun things like, call your mother on her cellphone, or, shake hands with three different people.  One card said, find your mother, tell her you love her, and give her a hug.  Ka Hei got that one & his mother wasn’t there but his dad was.  Good enough.  Again, didn’t have the camera ready fast enough, RATS!  He was so cute about it.  At 17, he’s at least as tall as dad.  He bashfully said, “I love you” and then hooked one arm around dad’s neck and gave this really cheesy grin.

Our craft was “obedience certificates”  Each child got a large card that was pre-printed with “I, ___________, will be obedient this week by_______________”  They were to fill in their names in the first blank, and then we had the moms write out one thing they would like them to do (or not do!) every day, for them to copy on the second line.  Then they trimmed them with some pretty paper strips, and they were sent home with enough stars for six days’ obedience.  We’ll have to ask how many stars everyone earned, this Sunday!