Sunday School, November 7

Pre-K and K:

 God Keeps His People Safe

God lovingly protects his people from their enemies. (Exodus 17:8-16). 

"Surely God is my help."  Psalm 54:4a

 1st and 2nd Grade:

God is Love

God was with Daniel and his friends when they lived in Babylon, and he showed his love by giving them the strength and wisdom they needed. 

 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."  John 10:11

 

3rd, 4th, and 5th Grade: 

This Sunday in Sunday School was a review of all the previous weeks. Next week we will begin preparations for the Christmas pageant, so this was our last regular lesson of the semester.

To review, we played “Kings and Prophets,” a game which we created based on Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders. We laid out the “board” in the classroom, which meant that each child was a player in the game.

We made cards that gave instructions to the player based on five kings and prophets: Jonah, Elijah, Jeremiah, and King David and King Saul. Though we tried not to oversimplify, we assigned moves on the board based on those characters.

We explained that the beginning of the board symbolized trusting in ourselves, while the end, which was a banquet table with goodies, symbolized trusting in God. As the cards demonstrate, different kings and prophets of the Bible trusted God, some in small ways, some in large ways, and some not at all.

As they moved along the board, they encountered three other types of spaces on the board. A mercy spot gave the student a mercy card which allowed them to cancel out the punishment of any card that did not help them advance. A sin spot made them lose a turn. Like chutes and ladders, the grace spots were ladders that only went up, representing God’s one-way love.

Overall, we hoped the game reviewed the basics of the Bible stories as well as demonstrate some of the larger concepts of the Bible, such as grace, mercy and sin.

Ultimately, it is Jesus and his work on the cross that helps us go from trusting in ourselves to truly trusting in God.  

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6

Sunday School October 31

Pre-K and K:
 God Provides Water
Just as God provided water for the Israelites long ago, he kindly supplies our needs today. (Exodus 17). 

"The Lord watches over you."  Psalm 121:5a  
 
1st to 5th Grade: 

To begin Sunday School, we read The Runaway Bunny. We were amazed at the children’s level of attention and how much of the message of that book they gleaned, especially as we applied the lesson of Jonah to that book. 

We talked about the story of Jonah and then asked them to draw the connection between the two stories. Jonah, like The Runaway Bunny, ran away from God and what God called him to do. And in the same way that the bunny’s mother promises always to come after the bunny, God came after Jonah. This is a picture of grace: God first sent a storm that rocked the ship he was sailing on. When Jonah realized the storm was related to his disobedience, he had the sailors throw him overboard. Another grace in this story is that the Scripture tells us that those sailors believed in the true God—without Jonah’s disobedience and admission of sin, the sailors would never have known and believed in the true God. 

Secondly, God sent a whale to swallow up Jonah and then spit him out on the beach after 3 days. In this pit Jonah was able to see his disobedience clearly and prayed, “The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head…yet you brought my life up from the Pit, O Lord my God.” (Jonah 2:5-6). Jonah finally obeyed and went to Ninevah to preach to the people there.

In the same way that Jonah was imprisoned by his sin, so many people are literally and metaphorically imprisoned. We reached out to some women that are in prison from things they have done by creating drawings with messages of grace to send with a parishioner attending a weekend retreat for these women. The message of Jonah is one of consequence for sin, but ultimately, grace from God for our disobedience and applies to all of us who are trapped by the bondage of sin.

 

“As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple… Deliverance belongs to the Lord!” (Jonah 2:7, 10)