This is a week for looking back over the past lessons. Let me give you a few coloring pages for the weeks that this blog missed.
Creation:
God brought all the animals to Adam, and he gave them their names.
God put Adam and Eve, the first man and the first woman, in a beautiful garden.
The First Sin:
The serpent tempted Eve to eat the fruit Adam and Eve had been told not to eat.
Eve at the fruit and gave some to Adam for him to eat.
Adam and Eve had to leave the garden.
Noah:
The animals getting ready to go onto the ark.
The ark floating in the rain
Noah sent birds out to try to find out what was happening, and how far down the water had gone. One of the birds was a dove.
Leading the animals off of the ark.
When Noah and his family got off the ark, after the water had gone down, one of the first things that Noah did was to worship God
God put a rainbow in the sky as a sign of his promise never again to flood the whole earth.
Help with Memory Verses
The memory verses for this week are the same as those for last week. I may publish something later in the week that is a help for practicing these, but for now, look at what I gave you last week.
Rebecca was pregnant with twins. They seemed to be fighting inside of her. God told her that two boys who would be different nations (that is to say, their children would be) inside of her. The older would serve the younger.
Jacob and Esau were very different young men. Esau loved to hunt, while Jacob took care of the garden and cooked. Which one do you think is Jacob in this picture? Which is Esau? How do you know? One day Esau came home from hunting very hungry. Jacob said that he could have some of his stew, but only if he sold him his birthright, the right of the older child to get a double portion of what the parents had to give when they died. Esau agreed to the deal, not appreciating the birthright properly.
Part of the birthright was a special prayer of blessing that the father would pray over his first born son. When Isaac got ready to pray this prayer over Esau, he asked Esau to go out and hunt, and then make him a meal with the animal that he killed. After he ate this special meal, he was going to pray for Esau. Rebecca told Jacob to trick his father into thinking that he was Esau. Because he was blind they were able to do this. Rebecca cooked a meal that would taste like it had been made from a wild animal. She put fur onto Jacob (probably not quite as furry as the picture shows) so that he would feel more like Esau to Jacob.
The trick worked. Isaac prayed for Jacob, thinking that it was his son, Esau. When Esau came back, both Isaac and Esau were very upset.
Help with Memory Verses
This week, the key verse and the bonus verses are all from the same place. The key verse is the first part of Psalm 23, which is also known as the "Shepherd Psalm" because it starts "The Lord is my shepherd." The bonus verses are the second and third parts of the psalm. So you might as well work on learning the whole psalm. If you only manage to remember the first part, then you'll have the key verse, and if you learn the whole thing you'll be in great shape.
Abraham worked as a shepherd, and we can assume Isaac kept sheep too. Jacob kept sheep and his sons did after him. The psalm is one that David wrote (or maybe a psalm that someone wrote about David--"of David," which is how the Bible describes the psalm can mean "written by David" or "about David." I like to think that David wrote it when he was a young man taking care of his father's sheep. We know that he prayed a lot in the fields when he was doing that, and we know that he had learned to sing and play the harp. What is there in your life that you could sing a song about?
A lot of people have memorized this one psalm over the years. Many of them memorized the translation of it that is called the KJV (or King James Version). That has some very pretty but old fashioned ways of saying things, and you may want to learn it too some day. But for right now, we're just going to learn a more modern version of the psalm. But if someone tells you that you have it all wrong, or quotes something that sounds like something you didn't learn, that might be what has happened.
It still uses a few words that we don't use very often. "Lack" means to have something missing. So if I say "I lack nothing," it means that there is nothing missing in my life, nothing that I really need that I don't have. The psalm says "you anoint my head with oil". To anoint someone's head with oil means to pour or rub oil over their head. It's something that they did to priests and kings to set them apart for God, but it's also something people did as part of being well dressed for a feast or something. When you were in mourning, part of the way that you showed how sad you were was not to anoint yourself. For us, oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, and one of the things (not the only thing) that "you anoint my head with oil" means is that God gives us the Holy Spirit. The last word that I think you might not know very well is "dwell". To "dwell" someplace is to live there. So part of what "I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever" means is "I will always live in God's presence, through my whole life on earth and forever afterwards."
I have a couple of different versions of videos that might help you. They're very similar, so read the descriptions. You can decide which you like better.
This is just me reading through the psalm with pretty pictures. By the way, one wonderful way to work on thinking through a piece of the Bible that you want to memorize is to make a PowerPoint presentation. Or put together a book, with pictures. If you do that, be sure to tell me about it, because I would like to see it.
This is a short version of the song I wrote for the psalm. I like the song better with the chorus, but that makes it pretty long, and so I think some people will like this better. Notice that there are some words that get repeated and a word or two that get added when it turns into a song. You have to be smart enough to figure out which those are when you are reciting it and trying to get each word right to match the Bible version. I'm guessing that you are smart enough to do that.
This is the version of the song that I like the best. It has a chorus in between each verse. I like long songs. I sing them while I am working, or driving in the car, or doing something boring. Not everybody is like me, so I gave you both versions. Tell me which one you like best.
Notice how old Abraham and Sarah are. They look much older than parents of new babies usually are. That's because they were. Sarah was 90 years old and Abraham was 100 years old.
Abraham and Isaac went to Mt. Moriah, the Mountain God showed Abraham
Abraham and Isaac looking ahead. It took 3 days to walk to the right mountain.
We don't know how old Isaac was at this time (maybe a lot older than in the picture) but he was old enough to carry a lot of wood.
Building an altar together on the mountain top.
Abraham started to sacrifice Isaac but God sent an angel to stop him.
God provided an animal for the sacrifice. In the end, anything we give to God is something that we got from God to begin with.
A long time later, God sent his own son, Jesus, to be a perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.
This is a short and simple song. I think you will find that if you listen to it a few times you will have the verse memorized in no time at all.
Bonus Verses:
Learn these after you have memorized the key verse. Everyone should memorize that one. These bonus verses are extra, but I hope you'll try to memorize at least one.
"On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."
-- Genesis 22:14b
This is a very short verse from the text of the lesson. You may not even need the song, but listen to it once anyway and see if it helps. Notice that the song has some extra words that aren't in the verse. I put them in parentheses so that you wouldn't get tricked into thinking that they were part of the verse. (If you want to hear the whole song, see the very end of this post.)
This is a much longer verse, about the idea of God providing the things that we need. It may look way too long to memorize, but I think that the song could help you memorize it pretty quickly:
I know what it is to be in need,
and I know what it is to have plenty.
I have learned the secret of being content
in any and every situation,
whether well fed or hungry,
whether living in plenty or in want.
I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
This is a very disturbing story. Would God actually want a father to kill his own son? How could that possibly be? Especially when God had told Abraham that he would have very many children who would also be children of Isaac?
For me, there are several keys to the story. A big one is that in the end God did NOT require Abraham to kill Isaac. He stopped him, and that's been something people have looked back to in order to say, "No! Human sacrifice is not a part of the way the true God wants to be worshiped." In the New Testament, the book of Hebrews (11:9) suggests that Abraham figured that God could raise Isaac from the dead if he had to in order to fulfill the promises that he had made. It's also important to realize that what God stopped Abraham from doing (sacrificing his son) is something that God himself did, allowing Jesus to die on a cross, God's one and only son, as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
We are told that Abraham is our father in faith and to me one of the things that means is that sometimes we may have to walk out with God something that seems a little tiny bit like this (but not EVER to kill our own child). But sometimes we have to be willing to give up to God something that seems very important to us.
This story came to have a lot of meaning for me personally at a time when I was waiting for my husband (well, the man who ended up becoming my husband) to propose to me. I felt a little like my life would be over if he didn't decide that he wanted to marry me. I knew that wasn't true, but I also couldn't clearly imagine what my life would be like if we didn't end up married. By the way, if any of you get into this situation, I recommend talking about it. To each other. Which is something we had done. There had been some confusion between us, and we'd gotten to a point where all I could do was to wait. And wait. And wait. During that time of waiting I began to think about Abraham. It took him three days to get to Mount Moriah. Three days of walking, wondering what was going to happen, with Isaac by his side. Isaac was not only his son (and remember that he was at least old enough to carry a substantial load of wood) but he was the way God had told him that he would fulfill the promise to give him as many descendants as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand. Was God really going to ask him to kill Isaac? What a terrible thought. As I was waiting and trying to hold before God my willingness to sacrifice this hope for the future that meant so much to me, I thought about those three long days for Abraham. Eventually, for me it turned out just as it did for Abraham--God did not require me to sacrifice my dreams, and my husband proposed. There are days when God calls you up your own Mt. Moriah, with a willingness to let go of everything that you care most about in the whole world. On those days, you do not know until you get there what is going to happen. You can always know that God will be faithful to you, but you do not know what shape that faithfulness will take until you actually make the trip up the mountain and build that altar and lay your heart's desire at His feet. (Kids: These are metaphors. Talk to your parents if you don't understand it.) Here's the song that came:
On the mountain of the LORD
It will be provided
All that you want me to give
On the mountain of the LORD
It will be provided
The strength and the courage to live
I'll go walking up that mountain
With my hopes and my dreams in my hand
I'll go walking up that mountain
Knowing you will allow me to stand
Isaac was Abraham's deep delight
A hope that was too good to lose
And God spoke to Abraham in the night
Saying, "Come to the mountain I choose.
Will you lay down your son there?
Will you hand the child over to Me?
Will you give up his life there
As a sign that you're trusting in Me?
Abraham left for the mountains that day
Leading his son by the hand
I think tears filled his eyes as he tried to pray
As he watched his dreams crumble to sand
He took wood and he took fire
And he carefully guarded the knife
And he wondered how he'd do it--
Would you ask him to take his son's life?
Abraham knew that he had to do it--
Whatever You asked him to do.
And somehow he knew You would see him through it
And still make your promises true
He bound Isaac to the altar
He was willing to go all the way.
And then you sent an angel
You provided the ram there that day.
Now through faith, we're the children of Abraham
And sometimes we'll walk in his shoes.
I believe there are times we will hear Your voice calling
I have a few coloring pages for you. These Bible pictures were drawn by a man named Jim Padgett. He doesn't always imagine things the way that I would, but he draws much better than I do. If you click on them you will get to a larger version of the pictures which you can download (right-click and save as) to your computer and print them out for coloring. I wish I had some pictures that show more of Sarai, but I didn't find any.
Abram leaving Harran to go where God led.
Abram near his tent.
I think he looks very young for a man who is more than 75 years old.
God's Promise to Abram
The pictures have been released for other people to use by Sweet Publishing under something called the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. This means people are free to redistribute, adapt, and use these illustrations in their own work provided that they 1) Attribute the illustrations to Sweet Publishing with a link, where possible to http://sweetpublishing.com and 2)Release any derivative works (what you create with them) under the same license.
These coloring book pages are "derivative works" because I played around with the original images to make them more like a coloring book. I hereby release them under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Note: This is very much under construction. A work in progress. Not quite ready for public consumption, though if for some bizarre reason you are here, then welcome. Just know that you are coming to a construction site, not a housewarming party quite yet.
This blog is a place to put cool things related to the lessons which are being taught at Kid Zone at Washington Crossing United Methodist Church. We happen to be using David C. Cook's Tru Curriculum,
used by many churches, so it is possible other folks may stop by to visit. I'm not planning to use any of their materials here, but I will be following their Scope and Sequence, adjusted by the times that our own lessons go to other resources. I plan to publish materials I have gathered for each week's lesson the week before that lesson, but then they will be available for later reference.
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