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!