Man Tries to Make a Name For Himself

Our lesson this week was on Man's desire to exalt himself by making a tower to heaven, and the Lord's refusal to share His glory, for our good! The story of God confusing the languages at the Tower of Babel is so interesting in so many ways, and the children really got into it. We began Opening Time by drawing different-shaped blocks from a bag and matching them to traced outlines on a piece of paper. Each block had a word written on it from our verse. We sang the whole verse several times as we matched the blocks. Some of the older children were incredibly quick to find the matches, but were patient and helpful with the younger ones who had a harder time -- a very good and unplanned lesson on investing in others. After we completed this, we took turns stacking the oddly shaped blocks to see how many pieces we could use before it fell.

Then we made a very nice line and walked over to our classroom. Jacob was our line leader and it is fun to see him taking his place as a class leader because he knows our routine so well from last year. After a few fingerplays, we sat down and were ready for the story. I had some cylindrical-shaped blocks made of foam. I reminded the children how that we could only stack so many of the odd-shaped blocks out in the courtyard. But did they think we could do better with these uniformly shaped blocks? They thought so. I asked if they could make a tower this high, and held my hand out. We each took a turn putting on a block and they were able to do it. We continued until the tower fell. Then I asked if we could make a tower to the ceiling? NOOOO. To the top of the trees? NOOOO. To the clouds? NOOOOO. When I asked them why not, Melanie said, "Because we're not tall enough to reach." And Jacob said, "And we don't have enough blocks." Melanie beat me to the whole point of the exercise: "Only God could do that!"

Yes! Man is limited, but God can do anything. Then I told them that we were going to hear a story about some men who thought they could build a tower all the way to heaven. I told them that the men thought that they would be great if they could build such a tower. (Instead of spreading out over all the world like God had said to do.) But God did not want them to think of themselves as great -- HE wanted them to KNOW that He was great. Because only He truly IS great. So he confused their languages. We had fun with this part. I said, "So maybe one man might want to say 'Hand me some bricks, please,' but what the other man heard was , 'I'm going to punch you in the nose.' " And pretty soon they all were quarreling and arguing and they never finished the tower. They wanted to build a tower to be a ladder to heaven, but they didn't a ladder, they needed a Rescuer. They could never get to heaven by their own works, they needed heaven to reach down to them. And it did -- when God sent Jesus!

When I got to this part of the story, Melanie had been looking very concerned. As soon as I said "Jesus" her whole face lit up and she said, "Oh, Jesus! Oh, what a beautiful story." She threw herself at me in a hug I shall not soon forget, and I thought: Now THAT is the right reaction to hearing the Good News about Jesus!


Then we got out our foam blocks again. We acted out the story of building the tower with them, but when I got to the part where the people began arguing I showed the children how the foam blocks were really "poppers" that they could pop at each other to act out this part of the story.

Then we regrouped and I layed out paper towers numbered from 1 to 10. I put them in random order then the children took turns picking out which number came next. On each tower, was a question about the story. One of the questions was "What did you learn about God in this story?" Jacob stood up and made his arms like muscles. "God is the most powerful. No one is as powerful as Him. Especially not those men who thought they were so great and so strong." Amen!

We ended or time in the classroom by teaching our new group an old favorite: a modified version of musical chairs to the verse jingles. (Each chair has a piece of colored paper on it. We play the Jingle CD and one person leads the others as they march around the line of chairs. When the music stops everyone sits on a chair. Then we take turns drawing one card from a pack of colored cards. Whoever is sitting on that color gets to be the next line leader.) This game is great because it's fun, it lets the children move around, and they are reviewing the verses at the same time.


We went outside and met Mrs. Salsamendi, who passed out coloring books and versepaks for everyone. We also passed out the Badge Requirements and CDs with verse jingles for the first 10 verses on them. For those who missed, I will bring the CDs again this week. If you have any questions about the Badge Requirements, feel free to call me anytime.