The Stories of Scripture: Adding to the Experience

I've posted about this before.

As you read the stories of scripture and passages to remember consider that people were day-to-day familiar with the natural images and analogies you find. It added to their understanding of the story - a teaching and learning tool in God's hand.

If you aren't already familiar with those natural images find a way! Look ahead at the stories you'll cover this season. Make a list. What pre-story scouting can you do to add to the sensory experience for your kids and ultimately to their understanding of who God is.

Maybe your kids are more familiar day-to-day with some of the images than you are. Give them opportunities to share.

Ask your kids: "What do you know about lilies in a field?" A sparrow? Sheep?

Grape vines

Rain on a farmers field

Waves on great lakes

a desert

dry seasons

floods

We know God by all the names He gives us in the scriptures but, especially as children, we learn to know God as Creator.

We don't even have to over-explain and understand all the ins and outs. Sometimes it's enough to just stand in awe of Him and all that His hands have done. Sometimes it's enough to just say "Wow!"

Liturgy boxes! Whether or not you use an actual liturgy 
or not, great idea! Play with it! Make it work for your own faith community!

Chapter 2 "The Creation Accounts of Genesis" *

 *from God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology by Terence E. Fretheim

Chapter 2 is here!

Not that this is a difficult book to read but there is so much to process! If you want the real meat of it, take the time to ponder the passages of scripture in the light of the author's observations and let the Word change your thinking... Here is my over-simplification of the author's observations and a bit of my own random processing.

First and foremost, the author's thoughts about the relational character of God aren't sentimental, modernistic notions but observations about God's initial and ongoing interactions with what He created (and creates) as expressed in the scriptures.

God is Creator, communicator, servant.  God is interactive, not out there somewhere.  He shared his thoughts with man. He shared His work with man. God named, then He let man name. He took something he made (dirt) and made something new (man). He took man, and made woman. He made them in such a way that they could continue creating human beings and set up all of creation to do that.

The author's focus is less on God relating to what He has created as a non-resident ruler or landlord but more as Creator including what and whom He's created in the process of continuing what He began - not as clones but as helpers.

It wasn't enough for God to just create and enjoy His creation, by Himself. It wasn't enough for God and man to have only each other. God gave woman to man and they created more people. The creatures of the earth created more of themselves. The non-animal creation created more of itself. The non-living creation also continued to create...Such a God we have!

Rest was part of God's creative process, the author says that perhaps it gave God opportunity to enjoy the fruit of His labors. God had a day for this and a day for that - interesting observation. God orders time as a dimension of His creation: sunrise and sundown, phases of the moon, phases of the night sky, seasons.

The author's observation that God kept evaluating His work was an interesting observation: God said, "This is good!" Creation - God's creation - is good. It wasn't "good" that man be alone - just him and God. It wasn't "good" that man be alone with just God and all the other things that God had created. God made woman. Man had been helping God. Woman would help man. Interesting?

There was give and take between God and His creation. God made clothes for Adam and Eve after they fell. Interesting observation that patriarchy came with the "fall." God took them out of the garden to protect them from the possibility of continuing on the path they were on and partaking of the Tree of Life and living forever with the "Knowledge of Good and Evil."

That's an interesting thought, isn't it. Is it in God's plan to save us from the "knowledge of good and evil," to redeem us from the effects of "the knowledge of good and evil?" Is that why Jesus came? Is that what our restoration, our being brought  back into a right relationship with God, walking with Him in the cool of the evening might look like?

God gave Adam and Eve the freedom to choose, knowing they could choose badly and they did. But God responded without giving up on that which He had made ... Man's choice affected all that God had made and God rolled with it, so to speak...Our wonderful interactive, relational, Creator God!

Chapter 1: "Theological Perspectives" *

 
*from God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology by Terence E. Fretheim

Processing Chapter 1. FINALLY!

I decided not to dissect it. I'm not a scholar or a teacher. I'll tell you what I brought away from it. Chapter 1 is twenty eight pages. I scratch the surface here. You might come away with something different.

My general understanding of this introductory chapter is that, the language of creation and the language of the scriptures tell us that God is relational. (p. 1)  God's relational capabilities extend beyond redemption and salvation. (p. 10-13)

I've always taken God's cosmic involvement, His role as Creator - once and ongoing- for granted. ( p. 5-9) I've taken his momentary personal intervention in the lives of men and creation (p. 8) for granted, even God's involvement in the lives of peoples who don't worship Him. (p. 19-22)

To whatever degree science confirms ecological interrelationships, I assume God designed it intentionally. (p. 19-20) I expect that creating life systems that work and keep working, systems that keep creating, save God the headaches of micro-management. But we'll never really know. God didn't have to give mankind a will - "Choose this day whom you will serve!" But He did. Eve made the first choice.   

Dr. Fretheim shows us that the scriptures open with our God calling Creation into being and the scriptures end in Revelation with God calling a New Creation into being. ( p. 9) He places the people Israel and their history in the context of Creator and creation. (p. 18) Note: The author considers creation more than just the natural world ( p. 4). Israel lives and has their being (as do we) in the context of all that God created. Perhaps their pastoral lives kept them more acutely aware than most of us are today.

God walked with Adam in the cool of the day, He dwelt with Israel in the tabernacle. He filled the sanctuary with His glory all indicative of His desire was to walk with man, to dwell in the midst of Israel and all that He made. And Emmanuel, of course - but that's New Testament. (p.22-27)

Faith communities who focus on God as Redeemer and on His work of salvation might take issue that the author sees redemption and salvation as only parts of God's greater work, not the end all. But he says, ". . .God's work as Redeemer does not stand at odds with what He is about in creation." ( p.10)  Freitham says we are redeemed, saved, bought back, to become all that God created us to become and do." (p. 10) Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. He came to restore us to God, Creator, Father. All of creation groans for the revealing of the sons of man, to be set free from the consequences that came when we first broke trust with our God Creator - but that's New Testament and this is about the Old Testament.

The seeds for thinking like this, the foundations for my seeing God first and always as Creator God, the God who made me and everything in and around me, began growing in me as a child - maybe because I grew up on a farm around animals and preferred outside to inside. As I grow I come to know Him by other names: Shepherd, Redeemer, Lord, Friend. For all of my questioning over the years whether or not God is relational was never one of them but thinking like that can make us egotistical. God - Creator - is much much bigger than that.

All through the Old Testament, God draws metaphor after metaphor from His creation to help us understand. (p.1-3) Successful human understanding requires that we are familiar with those same concrete realities in real life.

His basic claim "about the Old Testament understanding of creation, is that it has a fundamental relational character." God is relational! (p. 13) Of course God is relational! But the author is saying that all of the Old Testament gives us a relational understanding of God. Some people say, Of course. He is the God of Covenant. Freitheim explores evidence that, as revealed in the scriptures, God's relationships with Israel (and all that he's made) is more: "The inadequacy of covenant language in specifying the nature and range of the God-human or God-Israel relationship is [also] evident in the prophets' sharply reduced use of it." (p  15)

How we understand the scriptures influence how we see God, how we know God and how we perceive His influence, how we understand His Word. How we know God effects how we understand the scriptures, how we live and how we see and respond to the rest of the world around us. (p. 14)

We understand that those who recorded the holy scriptures were "pre-scientific" yet they lived in the midst of life realities that, today, scientists explore and study. (p. 27-28) From my perspective, scientists exploring and studying various and sundry aspects of creation does not make what they study less what God created it to be. When I look as all that we discover through scientific inquiry, I see just a glimmer of how amazing God is. Our theories, assumptions, and speculation are just that: human theories, assumptions and speculation. Thirty years from now those will change. But I begin with the assumption that God, my God, is Creator and all trails of scientific inquiry lead back to Him.

My comments won't do this book justice. Be forewarned: it's going to take me forever to wade through and process this book. Not a quick, easy read but interesting thoughts about how the scriptures reveal how very relational our God is and always has been.

I've also been reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp who (among other things) talks about naming in terms of noticing and giving God thanks. She ties in not just noticing but looking for God's gifts, giving thanks is a way of naming, and in doing that we acknowledge not just the wonder of His creation but His presence moment by moment. Perhaps we do more than acknowledge but we share that moment with Him, then we can't help but worship Him . . .gratitude changes us. It's worth reading the book.

So all three books are doing their work, not the books really but the scriptures tied to the ideas.

The point of taking time with children to notice, and be awed, and give thanks for His gifts in my mind is part of worship - worship that quietly puts God at the center of every day. This circle (wheel) starts to roll of noticing the little gifts God gives us everyday, our thanks acknowledges His presence, our awareness and our relationship grows, despite the other stuff - in the face of all the other stuff . . .

Sidebar:

The Church of England's newsletter Going for Growth (children's ministry/youth) cites a recent survey

Children & the Lord's Prayer (survey) . They also offer a resource page to help kids explore and use the Lord's prayer.

I find myself using it more. When we were kids we prayed before bed with one of my parents or grandmothers: "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, keep me safe all through the night and wake me with the morning light. God bless..." And you go through the list of every living creature you know. The longer the list, the longer you have before you have to go to sleep. There were probably times when I prayed "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." There may be other verses.  With our (now young adult) kids, we prayed Thank You prayers and we prayed for people. They learned the Lord's prayer but didn't use it in our evangelical/charismatic church every Sunday. They don't know it well.

Sometimes I prayed the Lord's prayer at night near the end of elementary school. I knew it because we prayed it in church every Sunday. And we went to church every Sunday.  A traditional Presbyterian church, soon to celebrate 225 years. When we actually started to look for a church when I was in my late 40's, early 50's I realized it was something I had never done. The Lord's Prayer (with a few differences) was one of those things that remained the same from church to church, denomination to denomination. A common denominator, if you will.

I've been praying the Lords' prayer more out of church in the last five years than ever before. Less "name-it-claim-it". More "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Did you ever wonder what that must look like from where God sits?

Dr Fretheim says, "A remarkable number of Hebrew words are used with reference to creation, with God as subject...The sheer number of words indicates that Israel's thought about creation was wide-ranging and complex." (p.1)

It would probably be interesting to know what concept Israelites have the most words for. Consider all the names for God.

Years ago, I found a book for kids about the seven Inuit words for snow. Apparently there are more: nouns, verbs - often describing or implying all the nuances that go with such an important presence in the far north. Contrast that to the number of words for snow in native Hawaiian or Caribbean languages. There were so many kinds of snow, context, detail that they needed more words to tell one another what they meant!

I once read somewhere that conquerors will often take away a conquered country's language and require them to learn the language, customs, and stories of the conquorer - to give up not just control of their land but their very identity .

People who speak different languages think differently. I read an article that a girl wrote for a children's magazine years ago. She grew up speaking (if I remember right) four languages. She found that when she thought about ____she used ___ language because of what that particular language allowed her to express.

Who knew! It's just interesting. Such is the beginning of the discussion about our relational Creator and his creation.

p. xvi


"It is the Creator God who is understood to be the redeemer of Israel from Egypt."


I think this understanding is foundational for children and faith. In my mind, Creation is all that God's hands have made. In my mind, God as Creator is something concrete!


The author quotes Rolf Rendtorff: "faith in God the Creator was perceived and experienced as the all-embracing framework, as the fundamental, all-underlying premise for any talk about God, the world, Israel, and the individual."


"...the underlying premise for any talk about God..." Apply that to working with children.

p. xv
The author talks about creation as more than a word study. He reminds us that Israel's understanding of creation was probably influenced by surrounding cultures. Israelite leaders decided matters like boundary disputes. Israel "lived close to the ground, if you will, and the natural world filled their lives. Creation was a lively reality for them prior to the development of specific ideas about creation...it may be that 'blessing' was a basic and early understanding of Israel's God as Creator."

Think of Adam and Eve and where they lived. Think of Abraham's journey, Israel's journey out of Egypt, David hiding out from Saul, Jesus in the wilderness. Where (not geographically but in light of creation) do the various stories of scripture happen?

The author raises a question. Which came first in the development of Israel's faith? God as Creator or God as Redeemer?

p. xiii
"H. H. Schmid...specifies that sedeqah, 'righteousness'...refers to a harmonious world order built by God into the very infrastructure of creation. . .  wherever righteousness is practiced by human beings . . . that act is in tune with the creation. . . When humans do not so practice righteousness, adverse effects are felt across all created spheres."

I think of Romans 8:19-22

Rolf Knierim: "Yahweh is not the God of creation because he is the God of the humans or of human history. He is the God of the humans and of human history because He is the God or creation. . .The most universal act of Yahweh's dominion is not human history. It is the creation and sustenance of the world."

I think of Psalms

Fretheim: "God is the God of the entire cosmos; God has to do with every creature, and every creature has to do with God, whether they recognize it or not. . .That the Bible begins with Genesis, not Exodus, with creation, not redemption, is of immeasurable importance for understanding all that follows. . . creation is as basic and integral to Israelite faith and its confession  as is the first article of the creed to Christians."

As a child, I just assumed that this was so...

p. xii
" ...[Claus] Westermann claims that the creation accounts ...are a witness to God's ongoing creative working every present moment. These accounts are understood in terms of ritual actualization in which the word about creation is recited in worship and the Creator is praised as the source of a lively word for ongoing life (and not as a source for intellectual probing)."

p. xiii
"[H.H. Schmid]...strongly emphasizes creation (rather than, say, covenant) as a comprehensive theological . . .framework within which Israel's most basic theological themes are developed and its historical experiences articulated. . . Schmid shows that creation in Israel is understood in terms of both origination and continuing order."  

What I surmise from this:

Creation is something God did historically, it is also something He is always doing.

Israel's historical life took place in the context of all that God created.

Dr. Fretheim cites many theologians - footnotes and all that. I'll give you page # with a quote and person quoted and a couple of comments. You'll have to get your own copy of the book to read all the sources he cites.

pg xi  "Rolf Rendtorff makes an obvious but neglected point: 'The Hebrew Bible begins with creation. Old Testament Theologies usually do not...'"

My brain jumped to...how does the New Testament begin? Was God speaking creation into being? Was He creating something from nothing? Was He creating something by just speaking a word?  God's Son (Living Word) made flesh, made man.

I've started a book that I've been considering for five or six years now, and guess what! I'll blog as I read. It may be a total bomb or it may be worth our time. It doesn't specifically deal with children or children's ministry. It is about God and creation. I don't know about you but creation played a huge part in my childhood and my child-faith. I don't see how you can bring God and child together without involving all that God has created.

Do you include "outdoor stuff" as you teach about God and faith to the same degree that God originally immersed man in His creation? Man walked with God in the cool of the day - immersed in God's creation. As we open Genesis, God was working. To speak was to create. Man's work - to name the things God spoke into being, to rule over (there's probably a more accurate phrase)  and care for them.

God and the World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation by Terence E. Fretheim. Abingdon Press, Nashville TN, 2005. I'm seven years behind! This came out about the time I started blogging.

One Thousand Gifts
by Ann Voskamp, a book worth reading! Her blog and website offer ways to cultivate thankfulness for all ages.

Google "quiet book" and find lots and lots of wonderful ideas!

Consider a weekly or monthly craft night for moms, teens, college students, grandmas. Make quiet books! Bring a page you've already made to show & tell or bring a page to work on. Figure eight pages. One page per week.

Give them as gifts. Make them available in the sanctuary during worship. Nice for car trips. Nice for nurseries or preschool rooms.

Sometimes the incentive of working in a group helps make it happen!

A Different Twist on Thanksgiving

I'm rummaging through my closet in the dark, using my fingers (not my eyes) to find something to wear and thought of you!

We take our God-given senses for granted until we lose them. Before I had cataract surgery I was using my fingertips to find clothes in a closet or drawer. How do you tell if something is clean if you can't see? Don't get grossed out. I'm just saying, that we take our senses for granted. Many Sunday Schools do a blind man's walking test to help make us better leaders and better followers. We can feel sorry for someone but that's not the point. They have strengths and abilities that we don't. We don't need them. We don't use them. The fact that human beings are even capable of growing such strengths and abilities is amazing. People who may be lacking sight or hearing or mobility draw on resources we don't draw on. They can do things that we can't. Man in particular, but every species, is fearfully and wonderfully made.

Sight: Divide your kids into groups of two or three. I like setting up a class so there is more participation and less waiting for turns. You will need one blind fold per group. Each group with have three pieces of clothes that feel different and three pieces of clothes that feel almost the same. Pick the T-shirt, pick the boy's dress shirt, pick the polo shirt. Set up one exercise that's particularly hard - three sweaters that feel the same but have different necklines or cardigan, V neck and pullover. Three knit shirts with different sleeve lengths. Three styles of shorts.

To appreciate hearing: watch a wildlife clip without sound. List all the things you don't hear. Then show it with the sound and see if you missed any sounds. Watch a real life movie (not animated) without the sound. Pick one that no one has seen before. Talk about it after. Watch it with the sound.

For taste and smell: pick some foods. Blind-folded, taste three cheeses that feel the same holding your nose. Taste them without holding your nose. Use three fruits that feel the same. See if you can tell what they are with just smell.  Use three leafy vegetables that feel the same. See if you can tell what they are with just taste.

To appreciate touch: when your kids come to class there is a new rule. You may not use your hands for anything.

For mobility: when your kids come to class there is a new rule. You can not walk or use your feet.

Go outside: Take the kids out when the seasons change. What's different? Individually or in groups, list all the things you see, all the things you hear, all the things you touch, all the things you smell, all the things you taste.

We need to make time to give thanks for all the things we take for granted. We have lots to be thankful for.

More Google searches: Bible stories about Hatred, Bible stories about respect. Can you name some?

A lot of people use scripture to defend their own ideas or justify the things they deem important. It always amazes me how we manipulate God's word but I guess that's what happened in the Garden of Eden to begin with. If you're a modernist you see modernist thinking in the scriptures. If you're a post-modernist you see post-modern. If you're a Crusader, you find reason to invade the Middle East. If you're a Puritan you find reason to burn witches. If you're a pacifist you find validation, too. Let me propose that God isn't any of those but He is all that the scriptures say about Him. So, does God intend us to take off our cultural lenses? Put aside our personal agendas before we come or bring them with us? I think He'll take us in whatever form we come if we come to listen and hear, willing to change. My understanding is that you can't enter the presence of God and not come back changed.

In order to go to God and ask Him what He thinks about something we need to be pretty familiar with the scriptures to start with, cover to cover, many versions. We need to take a word or concept and do an exhaustive search but always in context. If what we find seems to contradict itself no worries. It just means we have a long wrestling match ahead, especially when it seems to disagree with what we always thought we knew. And maybe that's the control, being open enough to listen and respond when we see things in God's Word that we weren't expecting. Or to say, "Yes, Lord, but didn't You also say..." As you search make sure you include all the stories about whatever your investigating. 

You could go the scholarly route of the original Greek and Hebrew but if most of us don't, didn't God design His Word to speak to us, too, or did He design it for us to go through scholars?

How does God feel about this? What does God think about that? Scripture says the secret things belong to God but the things revealed belong to us. (Deut 29:29) The scriptures tell us to search for Him with all of our hearts - whatever we do, to do it with all of our heart & mind & soul & strength. There are things that we don't know and we may never know. The Orthodox are content to say, "It's a mystery!"

Solomon in his wisdom said, there are times and seasons for things that seem diametrically opposed to each other. (Ecclesiastes 3). There are things in scripture that grate against our cultural and even religious sensibilities and what do we do with that? Gosh, if I have a problem with this, it must not be God. Nada! Or, "Look here, this gives me license to beat up some living thing because they didn't do things my way." I don't think that's it, either.

In some denominations they will always steer you towards traditional Church thinking to make sure you don't get way off base. In some churches they encourage spending more time with the parts of scripture that most people ignore or maybe they're more open to "revelation" and new ideas. If you've been steered way off base in traditional situations, you steer clear of that. If you've watched people go off the deep end you steer clear of the that.  But if you keep searching for Him with all your heart, He'll let you find Him. He's faithful to His own Word and to His People.  May God help us open our eyes and ears and hearts and take the journey to see all He allows us to discover about Him. .

I have great confidence in the God of the scriptures. Less confidence in us humans. For all the things that can go wrong and do, it amazes me that God still has such confidence in man. Go find His stories about Hate and Respect.

Welcome back Followers' page!

We hit 10,000 this week! Six years of blogging. If that brings 10,000+ people (and the kids they work with) a little closer to Jesus, I'm happy.

This is the St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer.

I like the lines,"Christ in hearts of all that love me," because it's a prayer for the people you grow relationships with whether they believe today or not. And this - "Christ in mouth of friend and stranger" Yes, and we know the Celtic and Roman churches had their falling out...sigh...

Can't find it right now but more than a hundred years ago a man wandered some islands in the North Sea (Scottish, I believe - Hebrides, maybe?) collecting the folk songs and prayers their isolated community had said for generations...prayers and spiritual songs for every event of the day, every kind of work, acknowledging God and His Christ and His Holy Spirit. Scripture talks of psalms, hymns & spiritual songs and praying without ceasing. (Some communities do that and don't write them down or neccessarily use the same songs or prayers over and over) They were people who expected Christ Jesus to walk through their day with them every day and acknowledged Him there ... I'm guessing that faith communities of every culture and subculture have tools that they use to keep their faith alive, some systems more rigid, some more fluid.

Scripture tells us that if Christ is lifted up He'll draw all men to Himself. How do we do that day by day, moment by moment, even without a word?

Colossians 1:9-10
". . . We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing [to Him], bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God." (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

Check out worshipping with children.

One of my favorite Psalms: Psalm 139. . . when you think toddlers, think "fearfully & wonderfully made..." When you think teens or pre-adolescent. When you think about individuals.