God the All-Wise

 Last week we saw how David was anointed king; this week we met his son Solomon, who succeeded him as king.  We had only one boy present when we started the Bible story; another arrived later.  The story leader first introduced the boy as King David, but then had to take his crown off and make him sit down to “die”.  So who should be Solomon?  He grabbed the same boy and said, obviously, Ka Ho; he looks exactly like his father David, doesn’t he? :-)

One night when Solomon was sleeping the Lord appeared to him and told him to ask for whatever he most wanted.  Samuel asked for wisdom.  The Lord told him that was a good choice, and because he chose that he would also be given long life, riches, and honor.  The next morning when Solomon woke up he wasn’t sure if it had been a dream or if it was for real.

It was for real: God had surely given him wisdom!  He was sitting on his throne when two women came before him, one holding a baby.  The women go into an argument over whose baby it is and whose baby had died.  They are yanking the baby back and forth; finally Solomon says, give me the baby.  He takes it and lays it down on a stool.  He says, since there is only one baby for the two of you, the best thing is to cut it in two and give you both half.  He has someone come and raise a sword over the baby.  One of the women throws herself over the baby and says no, don’t kill it!  Let her have it!  The second one says, no, cut it in two, that is fair!  Solomon points to the one kneeling over the baby and says she is the real mother and hands  the baby to her.  

 Our game was called, “Wisdom takes all.”  We prepared a large cube with the six sides reading: wisdom, long life, riches, honor, try again, and wisdom.  We had also prepared little cups of different kinds/shapes of sweetened cereal, labeled wisdom, long life, riches, and honor.  Everyone got to play several times by throwing the cube up in the air and seeing what came up.  If they got riches, long life, or honor, they got to take a piece of cereal from the corresponding cup.  But if they got wisdom, they got to take a piece from all four the of the cups.   A popular game, of course!

In our story, Solomon, thankfully, did not cut the baby in two.  But for our craft each child had eight dog-stickers that had been cut in two, they had to find the matches and stick them together on a large sheet of paper.  Some of the kids needed help to focus, but when they paid attention they got them right.

 

God Knows our Hearts

To illustrate this truth we went back to Samuel’s anointing of David, which we had purposely skipped in the previous unit.  We introduced King Saul, in crown, and holding a 福 character (meaning blessings).  The Lord had blessed Saul, but Saul’s heart was not pure toward God, so he was no longer under God’s blessing:  A very dramatic angel in a halo flew in and plucked the  福 character out of his hands and tore it up.  God was going to let him continue as king, but then the line would pass to another: we displayed a hypothetical dynasty chart, listing a sequence of kings as Saul I, Saul II, Saul III, Saul IV; one of the kids came and crossed out Sauls II-IV and traced a faint arrow pointing to a large question mark representing the unknown new dynasty.

So: at that time, Samuel was still the chief prophet in Israel.  The angel comes to him and says he is to go anoint the next king.  He is afraid, but the angel pushes him on his way.  He goes to Bethlehem and invites Jesse to eat with him.  They sit down with bowls and chopsticks.  Samuel asks Jesse if he has any sons.  He goes and gets one and sticks a #1 sticker on him.  Samuel thinks, what a handsome, strong young man; surely he is God’s choice!  But God is not looking on the outward appearance, but on the heart: the angel stands up behind son #1 and gestures, “No, no!”  So Samuel asks if Jesse has any more sons, and we are introduced to sons #2-7, all of which the angel rejects.  Samuel is confused!  He asks, are these all of your sons?  Well, there is one more, but he’s just a kid, out watching the sheep while we eat.  Samuel says, but we’re not eating until I meet him.  So David is introduced and the angel gives the thumbs up sign.  So Samuel pours an (empty) bottle of oil on his head and says, “God bless you.”

God knows everything: how much do YOU know, was our game.  Before our morning started, we had put up papers of different shapes & colors, with numbers, letters, Chinese and English words on them.  Each child got several chances to play by drawing a paper out of a bag and having to look around the room and find that shape, color, number, letter, or word.  Tested some attention and perseverance as well as knowledge.

Craft time reflected David’s having been out watching the sheep.  We painted glue on a half-sheet of paper (on all but the “water” part already colored in), and first stuck on a little paper shepherd, then shredded green paper for grass.  Small cotton balls dipped into the glue went on for sheep, and then little stickers with sheep faces were stuck on to the cotton balls.  Everyone seemed to really enjoy making these.

 I was in with the kids for free play time during the Bible study.  I was trying to help one of our more “ clueless” kids stack some legos, which I thought he had finally learned, but he was not having a good day.  I gave up, but 13-year-old Melissa persevered and worked with him for quite a while.  I am so impressed with her patience and so glad she attends our church!

 

The Sin of Achan Against a Holy God

Our God is Holy.  Not to be treated lightly, or bought off with bribes.  That was something that struck me as I prepared this story.

We reintroduced Moses as the one who led Israel out of Egypt.  But now he was dead (he sits down), and so we introduced Joshua, whose job it was to bring them into the promised land.  First, everyone had to cross the Jordan river, which was a blue line held about a foot off the ground so everyone had to step over it.  The next obstacle was the city of Jericho.  It was a large city with a high, thick wall.  But Joshua was not afraid.  He organized everyone to march around the city—we pulled one of the couches away from the wall, had a few adults sitting on it while all the kids marched around it.  As they marched, we explained that they circled it once a day, and seven times on the last day.  Then, they stopped and Joshua (actually it was the priests, but too many characters gets too complicated sometimes…) blew a horn, and the walls fell down.  So the Israelites were able to get in and destroy the city (marchers belay the couch-sitters with rubber swords).  Then they burned it all down (sprinkled orange paper scraps over all).

Now, when God had commanded that the city be destroyed, He said everything, and He meant everything.  But this fellow named Achan saw some stuff he really wanted, so he took the prepacked bag that was sitting at the end of the couch, and went and hid it in the storeroom, first using a spatula to “dig up the floor.”

So, the next obstacle the Israelites had to conquer was a relatively small city called Ai.  Joshua’s advisors said, it’s not worth sending everyone to fight against such a small city; just a small company will do.  So just a couple of kids went with Joshua to attack the folks on the couch which was now pushed back against the wall.  But this time the folks on the couch got up and fought back, and the people with Joshua died!  Joshua falls to his knees and cries out to God, “God, why did you abandon us?  Didn’t you promise to fight for us?  If this is what was going to happen, we should never have crossed the Jordan!”  But God, in the person of a haloed angel, pulled him to his feet and said, what are you crying out to me for?  What you need to do is get rid of the sin in the camp and then I will fight for you!

So Joshua calls everyone together and draws a name out of a paper bag: Achan.  He asks Achan what he did to make God so angry.  He confesses he stole some booty from Jericho and that it was hidden under the floor of his tent.  Joshua sends someone to go “dig it up,” and everyone is shown that he took a beautiful mantle, a bag of silver coins, and a gold bar (book wrapped in gold paper).  Joshua commends Achan for confessing his sin, but says that for the good of Israel, he must die.  So everyone stones him with paper wads.  Then several people attack Ai again and this time they are victorious.

For our game, each kid had to rummage around in a bag of shredded newspaper for what was buried there: a piece of cloth, a silver coin, and a square of chocolate of a kind that conveniently comes wrapped in gold paper.  The cloth and coin went back in the bag for the next player, but everyone got to eat their chocolate.

Craft was making a pretty mantle out of some plain gauze hankies by sewing a strip of ribbon along one edge.

I led the Bible study.  As we reviewed the story, I said, so when they were defeated at Ai, Joshua got down on his knees and said,” God, show us where we went wrong!”  Right?  Nope.  “God, you failed us!” was more like it.  So we talked about how we blame God for things that happen that wouldn’t have happened if we’d done things the way he tells us to.  (All too relevant for some of the things that have been going on in some of our families.)  They definitely got the point.  As I said, I had also been struck by how the only way Joshua could make things right was to get rid of the sin.  He couldn’t right things by doing good deeds or making an offering.  He was supposed to right a specific wrong.  Our God is truly Holy.  He loves holiness and righteousness, and is not appeased by substitutes.  Holy and worthy of our worship!

Aaron and the Golden Calf

We used this story to illustrate the truth that God is Spirit—not a golden idol.

We first introduced Moses, and said that at the time of our story, he had climbed Mount Sinai to meet with God.  Our Moses made climbing motions all the way to a chair and that sat down for the time being.  So he has been gone a while now, and the people are starting to get nervous.  They remembered how God had led them around with a pillar of cloud by day (everyone follows a leader holding up a pillar of cloud) and a pillar of fire by night (another round of the room, following the pillar of fire).  But now, no cloud, no fire, and no Moses!  But Moses’ brother is here, let’s ask him what to do.

Ah yes—before the story began, we passed out “jewelry”—necklaces, bracelets and rings—made of shiny gold twisty-ties.  So now Aaron collects everyone’s jewelry in a bag.  Then he gets out a stool, puts some “firewood” on it, and orange scraps for fire, and finally a large pot.  He dumps the jewelry into the pot and stirs it for a while.  Then he reaches into the pot, behind the piece of aluminum foil that is lining part of the pot, and pulls out a shiny gold cow.  He announces that this hereby represents the god who brought them out of Egypt.  He sticks it on the wall, then goes and gets a bottle of wine and pretends to share it with everyone.  Then Moses shows up, clutching a styrofoam tablet bearing the ten commandments.  He is furious, and tries very hard to break the tablet over someone’s head but the tablet is too strong.  He is, however, able to take the cow off the wall and rip that to pieces!  He demands that everyone apologize to God for representing Him as a cow, so everyone pulls their ears and says sorry.  End of story.

Aaron had gone around collecting people’s gold jewelry, so our game was going around collecting gold things that had been hidden (not too carefully) in the side bedrooms: lemons!

Then for the craft, we talked about how, in the real Bible story (as opposed to the tweaked-for-the-skit story), Moses had ground up the golden calf, sprinkled it over water, and made the people drink it.  First we ground up some not-gold things: everyone got plastic cups full of sugar cubes and a little bottle to smash them up with.  We needed a full cup of sugar, so there was lots of pounding.  I was afraid the kids might get bored with this but everyone stayed on task and asked for more cubes when theirs got ground down—cool!  Finally we turned our attention to the gold things.  Well over a year, someone had given me a gift of an electric juicer.  Well, here at home, if I need to squeeze one or two lemons, I am certainly not going to drag out an electric juicer!  So I’d never used it.  But for having kids help squeeze a dozen lemons, it was wonderful!  Everyone enjoyed this too.  Then we mixed the lemon juice & the sugar with water & enjoyed our lemonade!  Very popular craft!

Our God is Real!

This past Sunday was a huge event; our little group of 20 hosted 40+ visitors from a parents-of-special-needs-kids Sunday School class from Hong Kong.  I had hoped that it would give me an opportunity to learn something of how they run the concurrent special-needs Sunday School class, but somehow during the planning that slipped through the cracks and I ended up leading our usual Sunday activities, just with a much bigger crowd. (=Stressful!) We had to borrow a larger place, that was barely big enough for this crowd.

We did the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal.  Ended up having all our actors be from among the visitors, since they were sitting nearer the front.  We introduced Elijah, and then since even with this large a crowd we couldn’t come up with 450 volunteers, we chose three and hung signs with “150” around each of their necks.  Elijah introduces his challenge, and the people all agree it’s a great idea.  So it starts around 9 in the morning, and we had someone come up and set the paper clock to reflect this.  The prophets of Baal got to go first—took a stool, placed firewood on it, then took a paper cow, tore off its head, and put both parts on top of the firewood.  Then they had to chant: Baal, Baal, come down!  But by 12:00 (by the reset clock), nothing had happened.  So they took (paper) knives and slashed at themselves, hoping to get Baal’s attention that way.  No results.  By 3:00, Elijah was laughing at them (he had this great giggle on cue, I loved it), and asking if Baal had gone to the bathroom or something.  Finally at 6:00 (is that the time of the “evening sacrifice”?  I’m not actually sure), it was Elijah’s turn.  His first move was to build an altar with twelve stones to represent the twelve tribes of Israel.  I already had an altar drawn on a posterboard attached to another stool; we just had to have someone count to make sure there were twelve (there were).  Elijah also put on firewood and a torn cow, but then he went one better—he had someone come with a watering can and soak everything with invisible water. 

Next Elijah was instructed to raise his hands toward heaven and cry out, “Yahweh!”  He raised his hands and shouted, “Yahweh, how are you?” :-)  Yahweh responded by sending an angel to sprinkle fire over the sacrifice.  Everyone cheered and agreed that He was the true God and that He alone should be worshipped.  So Elijah grabbed a sword and chased the “450” prophets away.

After this we split up; the parents got to hear what was apparently a very moving testimony and meaningful discussion, but of course I was up with the kids and missed it.  Somehow I had thought they had said they were bringing 9 kids; in fact they had 15(or was it 16?) on top of our 8.  The room we used was almost completely filled with eight tables pushed together; great for craft but a little squished for the game, which was a kind of “musical chairs” or  “cakewalk” kind of thing.  Elijah chose the right God and got—barbequed beef!  So when the music stopped and everyone sat down, whoever was in the right seat (as determined by a number drawn from a hat) got a snack-sized piece of barbequed beef.  We didn’t have room to take away chairs and have people standing around, so the way we worked it was that whoever got their beef turned their chair in toward the tables (all the other chairs were facing out) while the rest continued to play.  Toward the end it seemed to be taking a lot of time, so the last four or five kids didn’t have to march any more, just wait until their number was called.

In fact, I had planned to do the craft first, so that we could stretch out this game as long as we needed to (not knowing how long-winded the adults might get!), but forgot since game-first is our usual pattern.  Sigh.  Fortunately I had had the foresight to prepare some coloring pages and sets of crayons to fill in the leftover time in case there was some, because there was, after finishing our little “altars” made out of two tissue packets taped together and “stone” stickers added (a lot more than twelve!  I wouldn’t have had enough were it not for the convenient fact that most of the kids didn’t put their stickers on in a close-fitting pattern.  Whew.)

     (no photo right now--my browser just doesn't want to add it.  maybe later)

Only one new family came for this big event, which was on the one hand disappointing, but on the other had just as well as we really didn’t have enough room for any more kids!  We need to be more careful in our planning if there’s a next time!