As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:14-15)

We opened with a "snake" game to spell out this week's new Bible verse, the 10th commandment, "Do not covet." The children matched pieces of the snake up to spell out the verse. In the classroom, we talked about what the verse meant: wanting something that someone else has instead of being content with what God has given us. God wants us to BELIEVE that He will always give us just what we need, just like He promises. He wants us to BELIEVE his promises. We talked about how God is asking us to be careful even of what we think -- and only with His help can we do it. We talked about fighting covetous thoughts by thinking grateful thoughts, and telling ourselves all the wonderful things that God has done and has promised to do. God will always give us just what we need. Our verse activity was a clapping game, leaving off one more word of the verse each time we sang it and replacing the words with claps. (Like the song "B-I-N-G-O.")

There were lots of wiggles at this point in the lesson -- but when I started the story, the children were all suddenly so still and attentive. I prayed many thanks to God for that sweet and sacred time. This week we learned about God's punishment on the complaining Hebrews (poison snakes) and God's mercy in providing a way of healing after their repentance. When I told them about the brass snake that God told Moses to raise up for the people to look at and be healed, someone asked, "What did it look like?" Jacob said, "I saw a picture of it once and it looked like it was on a cross." We talked about how we don't know exactly what it looked like but drawing it on a cross would make a lot of sense because God was using the snake as a picture and a promise of Jesus, who long, long after this story was also going to be lifted up so we could be saved.


Patrick remembered that last week God had told Moses he wouldn't go into the Promised Land. He asked about that and then said, "He must be really sad." this was such a great observation -- it made me consider the faithful perseverance of Moses in zealously doing the job God had given Him, even with the disappointment of not entering the Promised Land. I had not thought of that before and was grateful for Patrick's insight.

We sang through all the verses that we have learned, and I find that the children are really doing so well with the songs. Three more students got their gold stars this week: C.J., Jacob and SarahClaire.