Conquering challenges with God’s mighty power!
Our day started at Base Camp Sing & Play with lots more of us getting bolder about accepting our Sherpa’s request to come up and join her in leading singing! Your child can be up-front this coming Sunday as we’ll be singing a couple of songs in the church service at FUMC. Put on your VBC t-shirt and please do join us at 9:30!
Today’s Bible Point is…
God has the power to forgive!
Our Bible story for today in found in Luke 22:47-23:56. Our story today is about how God sent his son Jesus to do the most powerful and loving thing — for us!
Our Bible Buddy for the day is Pike. Pike is a mighty mountain goat called a marcher. Marchers such as Pike have spectacular spiraling horns that are sharp! Sometimes people say sharp words or do things that hurt. When that happens, it’s good to know that God has the power to forgive. Pike can help us remember words from the Bible…
You are a God of forgiveness.
Nehemiah 9:17c
We’ve been visited every day by Trek Rockrambler. Today, at first we couldn’t find him. Oh, he was trying to hide! It turned out he was unsure that his new crew would forgive him for making all of them sick. What if they miss their chance to climb Mount Everest? Our Sherpa helped Trek to see that he needed to ask for forgiveness.
The preschoolers went off to Preschool Peak and did the following…
- Bible Adventures – We heard about how Jesus overcame sin and death. We thanked God that he has the power to forgive us.
- Games – We played a game that taught us about forgiveness. It was called “Try Again.” We weren’t all perfect at tossing bean bags into a target. We were given a second chance!
- KidVid Cinema – Today our video was about Philip who forgave his brother Timothy when he broke Philip’s special toy.
- Craft & Play – We got to see what can happen to paper when it gets stained. Just like our sins can stain us. Then we got to see a different type of paper where those stains were just wiped away!
Meanwhile elementary kids visited the following stations…
- Bible Expeditions – Today we visited with Peter, and we placed our fingerprints on a cross. We heard about how God forgives us.
- KidVid Cinema – Today our video was about Philip who forgave his brother Timothy when he broke Philip’s special toy.
- Imagination Station – We decorated the traditional crew photos. A keepsake.
- Glacier Games – We played two games. The game “Nobody’s Perfect” reminded us that we all make mistakes and need forgiveness. The game “Yak Relay” taught us how sometimes a task (like going through life) is easier with a helper (porter Jesus?)
Will you look at all of that cereal! I hear we’ve collected 104 boxes so far! What a great gift to the Bryant Community! We also heard the report that we’ve collected so far $190.36 for RAWANA Youth Camp in Liberia. Thank you!
Our “older” elementary kids — the Grad Group — today were split in half. (It is such a large group!) One half delivered the first load of cereal to Bryant Community Center (BCC). While there they assisted with food distribution and other BCC projects. The other group heard about L.O.V.E. Thy Neighbor program at FUMC. Then repackaging food to be distributed in the lunches.
We all gathered for snack at Mountaintop Treats. Our snack was called “Summit Sponge Cake.” It was decorated with a cross! During our snack time, the Elementary kids talked about God Sightings. (The Preschoolers talk about them during Bible Adventure.) A God Sighting is not “I see God in that pretty flower.” God Sightings are seeing things that God has created, or allowed, or provided ,or things God has done, or revealed to us. Flowers can be a God Sighting because they point out God’s creativity and power. God created flowers; what an awesome God!
At the end of our morning everyone gathered together again for Summit Celebration. There was a huge chunk of ice up front! Our Sherpa told us that the ice was sort of like us. It becomes broken up by our sins, like a hammer chips away at an otherwise smooth block of ice. But the good news is that Jesus came to earth to collect our broken pieces of ice and make us whole again. It was a powerful demonstration of God’s powerful love.
Continue the learning at home!
Here are a couple of questions to talk about around the family dinner table:
- What is sin? (Sin is anything we do that pushes God or other people, away.)
- Why does it matter that Jesus died for us? (It means that God showed us that he would not hold our sins against us. God’s love is more powerful than anything and is still there, even when we sin.)
- Why did Jesus have to die? (Sin creates separation from God. To bridge this separation Jesus died so that all of our sins could be forgiven. As a result of Jesus’ death, we can have a restored, close relationship with God!
- Wasn’t there some other way; did Jesus have to die on the cross? Jesus had a choice! He could have run away from his oppressors. God sent Jesus into the world not to die, but to love. It is all part of God’s movement to restore relationship; pouring out his divine love over us!
Enjoy this video taken on Monday. (I’ll bet we’ve gotten much better at this song since then.)
If reading this in an email, you may need to watch the video at this link.
Check back to yesterday’s post, because additional photos were added to that slideshow.
See you tomorrow!
~~ Carol, on behalf of the VBC Team
Photo credits:
Everest and Bible Buddy images used by permission of Group Publishing.
Rest of photos courtesy of various volunteers at VBC!
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Family Faith Companion 