"Happy, Happy, Happy..."

I will punish, but I will not take my love from him. Nor will I ever betray my faithfulness. (Psalm 89:33-34)

This week's lesson focused on the faithlessness of the Israelites (as evidenced by their complaining) and how God dealt with this, revealing both his mercy and His justice.
We spent opening time working on a puzzle using words and pictures to illustrate our memory verse, the Fourth Commandment (keeping the Sabbath holy.) SarahClaire especially liked the picture card for "holy," which had actual holes cut out of it. I explained that holy actually means the opposite of being full of holes -- it means being perfect, without spot or blemish (or hole).
C.J. had taken home a CD of the Verse Jingles for our first seven verses, and came in singing them beautifully. If anyone else would like a CD, please let me know. Other great news: SarahClaire earned her Book Badge this week! If anyone else would like to borrow the book we are reading, please see Kelly.
We began our lesson time by drawing smiling faces on one side of a paper plate and frowning faces on the other and talked about what things made us happy and what things made us sad. Jacob said he was happy when he got to have a snack. Everyone enthusiastically agreed with that. The consensus on what made the children sad was any form of getting in trouble.
That was really a great transition to our story, since the Hebrew people got in a lot of trouble with the Lord in this week's story. God justly punished them for grumbling over His provision of manna instead of meat. I emphasized that the reason grumbling was sin was because it showed that the Israelites weren't trusting that what God did for them was the very best. God's punishment (a plague and so much meat that the Israelites were sick of it) was designed to bring them to repentance, to make them turn from their unbelief. God's consequences for His people are always meant to turn them back to Him, to give them hearts eager to obey out of faith in a good God -- because trusting and obeying God is what makes them most happy. I defined "repent" as being sorry for doing the wrong thing and asking forgiveness and for God to help them do what is right. I told them that that was a very good word to know.

But I stressed that God also made it clear (by sending all that meat) that He would never stop providing for His people, not even when they grumbled. He would discipline them, but He would never give up on them.

The story also included God's punishment of Miriam with leprosy for murmuring against God's appointed leader, Moses. This section required some explaining, when C.J. brought up that it was scary. I reassured him and took time to explain again that God only punishes His people in order to drive them back to Him and that God had shown kindness and mercy to Miriam in correcting her, in not making her punishment worse (since the wages of sin are death) and in healing her leprosy after seven days. God knew that trusting Him to provide what was best (Moses as a leader), was what would make Miriam the most happy. The children seemed to understand this. When we stood up to leave, Nicholas jumped up and down in place, saying, "Happy, happy, happy... happy, happy, happy."

We had run short of time, and all the children did a good job helping me stack the chairs and leave the room neat and tidy. C.J. kindly offered to carry my very heavy Bible. When we returned for closing time, Jacob represented our class well by quoting one of our verses for the whole large group. We didn't have time to do all the activities I had planned, but it was a great night.