In-Class Adventure 4

The focus of that last post isn't the creation of literary masterpieces, by the way, or the Psalms as Literature with all it's literary forms. But if kids want someone else to read and hear what they're saying, they might care more about handwriting, spelling, grammer, punctuation, and organization - emphasis on "might". But I wasn't going to get into all that.

Between me & God, making a psalm "mine" or creating one
- helps bring me closer to the story of David and
- helps bring his story closer to me (I get a little taste of interacting with God the way David did)
- it's another way I can draw near to God the way David did
- it's a way to meditate on His word the way David did
- crafting scripture or a psalm into song is yet another way to meditate on His word the way David did

In-Class Adventure 3

Here's one: from Psalm 15

Lord, who lives in Your house?
That house on a hill - a holy hill?
How 'bout me?

I'm not the kid who never gets blamed.
The one who always does the right thing
Sometimes I lie
Sometimes I gossip
(or slight someone)
Sometimes I bad-mouth people
Sometimes I hurt people

People like me don't live in Your house.
But I want to.
Help me.

Teach me to despise vile people
[I thought God loved everyone and just hated their sin?]
Teach me to honor those who fear You
[even when they aren't perfect]
Teach me to keep an oath until it hurts
[even when everyone else breaks their word]
Teach me how to lend without doing it to earn interest,
without expecting to profit from giving or lending
to give without expecting anything in return
If someone tries to hire me or convince me
to wrong someone
who doesn't deserve it
I'll say "no."

Maybe I can be someone who lives in Your house.
The people who live in Your house are unshakeable.
If I live in Your house, I'll be unshakable, too.

In-class adventure 2

Here's an activity. David was imperfect but his worship was heart-felt honest expression, and he feared God.He was a man after God's heart. God interacted with him and responded to him. He responded to God.

Take a class of kids who old enough and comfortable with reading and writing and able to rethink ideas and put them in their own words.

Ask some questions - Who is the Psalm written for? Psalms are written as worship - for God. But some are for God's ears only. Some are written to encourage your own soul. Some to encourage or draw in the people around you to worship and praise. What else can you discover about who the Psalm is for? When would someone use a prayer or praise like this? How would they be feeling? Sometimes they fit into David's story and you can tell what was going on with him and what he was feeling. Some of the Psalms aren't even David's.

Give them a Psalm to rewrite in their own words as a very honest prayer or as praise - an expression of personal worship to the Lord - like David did. Don't worry about accurate rendition of the text. With a listening heart, look for David's heart-rending honesty. If they're mostly the same, listening to all of them would get boring. On the other hand, if they're quite different, it might be interesting to listen to all of them.You can post them on the wall or you can let each of the kids pick a partner for the first read. You pick a partner or let them split into groups of three for the 2nd or 3rd read. New listeners each time.And nobody comments. Just listen. They're all using the same Psalm.


Here's one: from Psalm 15

Lord, who lives in Your house?
That house on a hill - a holy hill?
How 'bout me?

I'm not the kid who never gets blamed.
The one who always does the right thing
Sometimes I lie
Sometimes I gossip
(or slight someone)
Sometimes I bad-mouth people
Sometimes I hurt people

People like me don't live in Your house.
But I want to.
Help me.

Teach me to despise vile people
[I thought God loved everyone and just hated their sin?]
Teach me to honor those who fear You
[even when they aren't perfect]
Teach me to keep an oath until it hurts
[even when everyone else breaks their word]
Teach me how to lend without doing it to earn interest,
without expecting to profit from giving or lending
to give without expecting anything in return
If someone tries to hire me or convince me
to wrong someone
who doesn't deserve it
I'll say "no."

Maybe I can be someone who lives in Your house.
The people who live in Your house are unshakeable.
If I can live in Your house, I'll be unshakable, too.

In-class adventure 1

Here's the first part of the adventure. Take off 20+ years of religious glasses and really look at David, the man after God's own heart (Passion gone right. Passion gone wrong.) and just make observations. Look at the grubby details of life as a shepherd, life as the youngest of a testosterone-filled household. Life as a soldier. Life as a king. A womanizer. Write a long list of honest observations. Would you let him join your church? What was he good at? What was he bad at? Or how did he succeed in men's eyes? In God's? How did he fail?

Not that God condoned breaking His commandments but His stories are full of some pretty unsavory situations and less than perfect people. If you let kids make the honest observations that only kids can make about our religious icons - the heroes of scripture - without our grown-up interpretations you may discover things about God that you've never seen before. Especially if you listen to kids who didn't grow up in the church, who didn't teethe on these stories. Some of the stories of scripture aren't appropriate for young children or even elementary aged although in today's world maybe we need to rethink that if there's a child in the story. But what about middle grade? What about teens and young adults? There are stories in scripture that adults don't even explore but they're there.They're in the word. God gave us these stories. What do we do with them?

reading and pondering

Here's an adventure for you. I was reading Psalm 15. (More on that later.)

Do a word study on the word "usury." But instead of thinking of it as something related to ancient Hebrew culture or as a business term think about "usury" as any time we lend or give with the expectation that we can profit (even a little) from that act of lending or giving . . .

. . . see what you find.