Elijah, or following God in tough times

This week in Sunday School (and at home) we learned about Elijah (and yes that does look like mug shots, but it amuses me and makes drawing easier).  On my facebook page I wrote I was worried about setting the fire alarm off.  For good reason, when we practiced this the first time at home I nearly set off the smoke alarm trying to get the fire out.

One of the things that amuses me about Elijah is how much he persevered.  That and now much his story is like a science fiction novel.


Now God calls Elijah out of Gilead (black arrow) to Samaria (red arrow).  Elijah delivers the news that God is not going to allow it to rain and Elijah will have the power to decide when it rains again.  This is a scary thing for Elijah because Ahab, the king of Israel, has already killed most of the other prophets of Israel.  After delivering the news Elijah hides near a small river for a few years.  There, he’s fed by ravens twice a day.  RAVENS, did you read that?  I told you Elijah was weird.

God continues to keep Elijah safe and sends him up to Zarephath, and many other strange things happen, but the crux of the story is coming.  You see that fire on the map, that’s where the heart of the story starts.

God sent Elijah to challenge Ahab’s priests to a duel of sorts.  Ahab would bring his 450 priests and Elijah would bring himself, and whoever’s God lit the sacrifice would be acknowledged the one true God.

At this point I took my Sunday School class outside because we’re meeting at the YMCA and I don’t want to cause trouble.  As we sat outside I talked about how the priests of Baal tried over 4 hours to get Baal to light the sacrifice.  Elijah started making fun of them, “Maybe he’s taking a nap.  Maybe he’s going to the bathroom.”  Then Elijah stepped up and got ready.  He rebuilt the altar (we started to put sticks in a GLASS bowl), and when the altar was rebuilt and a trench dug around it he added 3 pitcher of water (whereupon we poured a clear liquid on our altar (rubbing alcohol).

Then God lit the fire.  The kids were suitable impressed.  After this Elijah ordered the Israelites to kill all of Baal’s prophets, and they did.  Then God sent rain.  Ahab mounted up in chariot and rode down to Samaria, and Elijah ran in front of him to get there first.


For the kids to get an idea of what this was like I had them run ALL the way around YMCA and come back into the classroom.  Remember, it’s Texas summer so it was about 100 degrees, and a little muggy.

When they came back inside, I continued the story.  Elijah ran to the palace where Ahab’s wife threatened to kill him.  He started running again, and ran all the way to Beersheba, and continued running for another day.  Finally he collapsed in despair and asked God to kill him.

Instead God fed him food and water and made him sleep. Now we gave them their snack and water.

Elijah continued down and stayed at Mount Horeb (Mt. Sinai) for 40 days.  Now we come to the part I wanted to hammer home.  Here’s the point I wanted hammered home.  God asked Elijah, “Why are you here?”  Elijah started to complain, “Ahab killed all your prophets, and I did this amazing miracle and now he wants to kill ME.”  God had Elijah come outside.


Elijah stood on top of the mountain, and a great earthquake arose, knocking over boulders, but God was not in the earthquake.  God brought up a terrible wind, bending trees and uprooting bushes, but God was not in the wind.  Then a blazing fire burned hot and bright, blistering all within its heat, but God was not in the fire.  Then a stillness came and God spoke out of it, “Elijah why are you here?”

Now Elijah repeats all he said before, but this time God gives him a new direction.

Why do I think this part is so important?
Because God didn’t say Elijah it’s wrong for you to be dejected.  He understood why Elijah was so tired.  He’d just run 2 marathons and that’s tiring.  He’d spent years hiding from a cruel king, and that’s tiring.

God understands our pains, and is patient with us.  We can persevere in terrible situations and God will help us bear up.  He gave Elijah food when there was none to be had.  He helped Elijah and the widow for years.  God will be with us.

HEADS UP, I’M MOVING TO WORDPRESS, so if you follow on GFC you need to subscribe using RSS feed.  You can find it on my side bar.  It looks like this:

more warnings to follow, I’m sure.
linking up over at Kids in the Word

Gospel presentation: Chalk Walk

This is a gospel presentation my church has been using during Bible clubs for years, since I was in high school (you know when the dinosaurs were roaming the earth, or that’s what my kids believe anyways).

You start off by filling an area completely with chalk, so there’s nothing uncovered.  Then you explain the side that Superman is standing on is us, and the other side represents heaven.  And all of that pretty chalk represents the sin that separates us from God.  Sometimes sin can look pretty or fun to us, but it has consequences we don’t see right away.

 

Next, challenge them to get across without getting their feet dirty.  It’s not possible, even if you walk on your tippy toes you get chalk dust on you.  And even a tiny little bit of sin keeps you out of heaven.  No matter how hard we try, we can’t get in on our own.

 

But, if someone covers that sin with their payment, like Jesus did with his death on the cross, than we can walk across to become friends with God.

 

It’s simple, easy, and effective.  It’s one of my favorite gospel presentations for kids.

Bible: Raising of Lazarus game

All you need are a few energetic kids and some toilet paper rolls

Oh, and a “willing” volunteer or two.  The teens at our church are such good sports.
And at the end you can cry out “Lazarus Come forth,” just like Jesus did and Lazarus can:

Emerge from the grave!
As you can imagine this was wildly popular!
pop on over to Kids in the Word Wednesdays to see more ideas.

Bible craft: David and Jonathan

One of my favorite stories of friendship in the Bible is the story of David and Jonathan.  Jonathan’s father, King Saul, started off treating David as a son, but as he became more jealous he chose to try and kill him.
In the story, Jonathan promises to find out his father’s plans and then let David know by firing arrows into a field.  They set up a code, and Jonathan goes to get the news from his Dad.  Sadly, he finds out that David needs to run.  After reading the story, we decided to make our own bows and arrows.
On my 1 and 2 Samuel pinterest board, I have a link to make a bow out of a popsicle stick.  I followed the directions pretty closely, with one major adaptation.

The instructions are well described on the original blog post, so I’m not going to say too much here.

The main thing I would add is to carefully and slowly bend the sticks.  It doesn’t take much to make a “good bow,” but it is very easy to splinter them even after soaking for hours.

** I categorized this as a Mommy craft because my kids do not yet have the dexterity/fine motor control to make this.  Upper elementary kids might be able to do this.
linking up to Kids in the Word Wednesdays

Bible Craft: David Man after God’s own heart

We read about when Samuel came to choose the new king.  Samuel kept looking at the older brothers and thinking, “Now that looks like a king,”

 

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”  1 Samuel 16:7

 

So, we talked about what things are important in our hearts.  Which of course led to drawing our hearts.  I wanted it to be this multi-sensory use lots of different coloring sources…….  Yeah, not so much.

 

They enjoyed it though, and that’s what matters.

 

If you look into their hearts and what they drew, you can see, what’s in their hearts.  Family, friends, animals.  (kids in order: Batman, Superman, Princess)

 

It made me happy to see the values I’ve been pouring into them reflected back.

Bible Craft: Jesus heals

One of the days of clubs was the story of Jesus and all of the amazing things he did.

With the pre-schoolers we talked about how Jesus could heal the people without using medicine or band-aids, just by talking Jesus was able to heal them.

But, we can’t do that, we need band-aids, so we “healed” our friends, with band-aids.

There were a lot of “owies.”

After we played a game.  One person laid down at the end and was hurt.  The first person in line would run over, hug them and heal them, then lay down and pretend to be sick.

This was wildly popular, but rather crazy, so no pictures of the game.

linked up over at Kids in the Word Wednesdays

How to make Gospel Fuzzies

Does your church use Gospel Fuzzies?  Ours does for the pre-schoolers.  To spare you my singing voice, I’ll share the same video I found for our training this year:

Little kids love this song.  Especially if they have their own Gospel Fuzzies to sing with.

 

So, I spent an hour or so making 100 sets for Kids Clubs this year.  It’s easy for the simple version all you need are:

popsicle sticks, yellow, black, red, white, and green pom-poms (or fuzzies), glue, google eyes (for the complicated version)

 

Just put a dot of glue on each stick and that’s all you need, it holds up against destructive 4 year olds just fine.

 

Put your sets in a ziploc bag and you’re good to go.

Sharing the Gospel with others

Every year our association of churches does kids clubs all throughout the Austin area.  My church does clubs in parks in an under-served area of Round Rock. 

Some of these kids don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

Some don’t know where their Dad is.  Or maybe they do know, and that’s the problem.


Some desperately need a hug.

Or a meal.

Or love.

So, each summer our church loads trailers full and brings giant inflatables and meals for one week.

People take off of work.  They give up a week of their summer.  The teens leading it give up two weeks of their summer, one week of training, and the week of clubs.  They don’t sleep much that week, they get tired.

I don’t think they believe they’re giving up anything……..  I certainly didn’t when I was a teen doing that.  Each summer I spent a month doing various mission trips.  I grew so much those summers.

So, if your kid ever gets a chance to serve like this, or if you’re given the opportunity to serve and volunteer for something bigger than you.

JUMP AT IT!  Take a running leap and jump as fast as you can to volunteer.  It will change your life for the better.

All that to say, I’m gonna put some posts up this week about all the cool things we did, and some other Bible stuff I’ve done recently.  I had planned to write all about it here, but honestly, I just wanted to say take a step out in faith, see what God does.

How to get your kids to volunteer

I’m choosing to post this today because I think volunteering is one of the principles our country was founded on.  Large numbers of the men who fought for our independence took no paycheck, they fought because they believed it was right.  To this day the United States is still a country that leads in volunteering and in charity.  I want my kids to be leaders in this area.

Every Sunday morning I teach Sunday School at my church.  We come into our classroom, which is 1/3 of a basketball gym, and there is nothing set up.  We meet in a YMCA, and there is a crew of big burly men who do most of the hard work of setting up the worship service and putting up lots of curtains to divide rooms up.  But, the individual classroom are set up by the teachers.

This is my view every Sunday morning as I finish my breakfast.  Jeff carries in huge stacks of chairs, and the kids pull them apart and put them around tables.  They help happily.

Why do they help happily?  Because they see their parents serving.

 

They see us get up every Sunday and do it.  They see us during the week working on our lesson and practicing it on them.

 

They see me pick up trash I see in the street and throw it away, even if it’s not mine.  Why?  Because it’s my calling to care for the earth.  Why?  Because God called me to be a steward, I am to keep it and care for it.

 

So now because the kids have seen me pick up trash for years, they pick up trash they see in the street.  They don’t usually randomly drop it on the ground, there are those times they do, but it’s becoming less often.

 

When I read Mom Connection, I realized I wanted to work on how we’re giving back to the community that has given much to us.  As I started to think on it more, I’ve realized we are giving back already.  Now, I need to refine this and make it more structured.  One of my plans is to bring a plastic bag with me when we go to the park to put the random trash we find into.

 

It’s a small thing, but it’s one we can do.  Do you have a small step you’re going to work on?

Science Sunday: Easter edition

 

So, let’s pretend I didn’t break all of the eggs I have dropping them earlier this week.  Or let’s say I did and I made it to the grocery store before Thursday afternoon.

Then let’s pretend I actually was able to do the science experiment/Easter lesson I wanted to do instead of having to run errands for an upcoming vacation.

 

So I could share with you the science of Easter Story Cookies also known as meringues (head over to that link for a great explanation of how to do meringues to tell the Easter story).

 

Instead, I’ll just explain to you verbally, so much more boring that whipping the eggs breaks up the amino acids and the protein molecules by adding air into the mixture.  When they are heated the molecules are solidified creating the yummy lighter than air mixture.

 

Actual more technical explanation, that is not written by a woman madly trying to get things done while her daughter is taking a short bath and her sons are attempting to conquer the world using a stick and some other imaginary weapon.

 

Let’s see some other Bible related science:

Almost Unschoolers showed the science behind Resurrection Rolls.

 

Mad About Jesus has a whole section of science experiments to show different Biblical principles.

 

Mama to 4 Blessings showed a great illustration about obedience using pennies.

Almost Unschoolers showed how sin can change us by doing the classic change the carnation’s color experiment.

 

 

<a href="http://adventuresofmommyness.blogspot.com/search/label/Science%20Sunday" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g344/Ticia1/AiMScienceSundaycopy.jpg" alt="Science Sunday" /></a>

Holy week devotional

I put this up over at my other blog, but I think it's so cool I wanted to share it with all of ya'll.

Holy Week Devotional for your family

So go check it out!

God loves hearts

Happy Chocolate Sale Day!

Okay, so that started yesterday, and is actually the reason for this post.  I wanted to alert you to a cool item for teaching your kids the 10 Commandments that I made.

I blogged about it at my NEW BLOG, PEG DOLL BIBLE STORIES, where I’ll primarily be putting up my posts about what we’re doing to learn about God’s Word.  But occasionally I’ll post them here too still.

 

Supplies: giant chocolate heart, foamboard or posterboard (I used the thinnest layer of foamboard, if you do that you need a thicker box, like as in one designed to hold 2 layers of candy), various red tissue paper and red or pink scrapbook paper

1.  Trace your box onto your foam board.  When you cut it out, cut just inside the lines.  Check to make sure you can easily take your heart in and out of the box, for me I needed to trim my heart a little.

 

2.  Trace the top part of your heart and divide it into two.  This will let you make the pieces for the Commandments (sorry, I have no pictures).

 

3.  Start putting your paper on using mod podge or something similar.  I figured out that tissue paper works best because it adds the least bulk.

4.  Check to see if it all fits in your box.  The second time through it did for me.

 

If you go to 10 Commandments Activity, there’s a printable for your kids to make their own version.