Sunday school

Bethany fleeing from a frog her sisters discovered in the church yard.

Our Sunday school lesson this week was about God calling Abram, later named Abraham, to leave the land of Ur to go to the land that God would give him (Genesis 12). After a warm-up game of "Simon says" (spiritual parallel, when "God says" you had better do it; when anybody else says, you had better think before you do it), my three students and I read the scripture passage, found Ur on the map and discovered it was located in present-day Iraq, shook our limbs while singing "Father Abraham," and achieved minimal success at folding colored paper into miniature tents. Then I passed out paper doll outlines while Bethany found crayons, markers and colored pencils. 

We had three main characters in our story--Abram, his wife, Sarai (later Sarah), and his nephew, Lot. Of course, the role of Sarai fell to Bethany, as the only girl. But both Daniel and Ethan wanted to represent Lot. Finally, since Ethan was the visitor, I awarded him the task of depicting Lot, and Daniel was left with Abram.

Daniel made the best of the old guy. "Well, my Abram's going to be a soldier," he said.

Knowing Daniel's fascination with wars in history, I said, "Abram was a fighter."

"He was?"

"Yeah. When Lot lived in Sodom it was attacked by enemy kings and they took Lot captive. Abram and his servants had to go fight the enemy kings and rescue Lot" (Genesis 14).

"Ah ha!" Daniel said, gloating over his cousin. "I had to rescue you." The boys were impressed with the thought of battle and decided to draw swords in their characters's hands. As boys that age are apt to do, they didn't fail to mention that Bethany/Sarai, as a girl, wouldn't be involved in the battle. 

"Oh, but Sarai was a beautiful woman," I said. "She was so beautiful that an evil king captured her and took her to his palace" (the latter part of Genesis 12).

Daniel wasn't interested in princesses in distressed. He wanted to know if we were going to learn about Abram rescuing Lot. 

I flipped ahead in the teacher's book. "That's next week."

"Cool. I'm coming back next Sunday!"

Me too. I love teaching Sunday School.