God Gives Joseph Dreams

We emphasized the All-Knowing character of God as we opened the story of Joseph, one of the most striking Christ figures in the Old Testament. Today's story helped to establish the sinful hearts of Joseph's brothers (we are the brothers in this story; we are not Joseph) and that Joseph has been chosen by God himself for something special(as evidenced by the prophetic dreams.) This narrative, which will take another week to lay out, stirs an understanding of the Gospel that is deep and comforting.

In Opening Time, we awarded Jacob with his Book Badge and Melanie with her Service Badge. Jacob had listened to R.C. Sproul's "The King Without A Shadow" and "The Priest in Dirty Clothes." Jacob told us a little bit about the books, and also about how much he loved his Mommy because she has long hair and when it's cold he likes to hold it. Melanie had written notes of encouragement and done a total of 10 acts of service, including helping her Mommy,which she was very pleased about. (A few weeks ago, she had told me how excited she was that soon she would be able to help her mom do dishes.)

We worked on Psalm 121:7 by playing a Spelling Game with certain words in the verse. I had written the verse out but certain words were spelled out with Letter Cards. The children chose cards from a set of identical Letter Cards, then matched them to the Letters in the special words in the verse. Each time a child got a letter correct, we sang the verse.

In our classroom, I introduced the idea of God's omniscience with a game designed to show that WE don't know everything. We played "Rover, Rover, Where's Your Bone?" One child pretended to be Rover and then closed their eyes. The rest of us passed Rover's bone around, and then I had it stop at one person. That person sat on the bone. We had Rover open their eyes and we chanted, "Rover, Rover, Where's your bone? Somebody took it from your home. GUEEEEEESSS WHO!" Rover would try to figure out who had it. In the final round, we folded up Rover's paper bone and hid it in Jacob's pocket, but Melanie figured it out very quickly!

We moved to story time and I opened by holding up a DVD movie. I told them that we all know what movies are -- and when we go to sleep sometimes we remember seeing movies in our mind. These are dreams! I told them that in our story we would hear about how God had given a boy some very special dreams. Jacob said that sometimes he has bad dreams. We talked about that for a little while. Then we got back on track with our story, identifying Joseph as one of the two youngest sons of Jacob and establishing that Jacob had chosen Joseph as special, and had given him a colorful coat suited for a king. We talked about the sinful hearts of the brothers, jealously wanting for themselves what was given by the father to their brother. Then we talked about how God himself had told Joseph he was to be special, by giving him a dream including one in which twelve bundles of grain bowed down to one bundle in the middle.

After our story, we colored a picture of the bundles of grain and I asked the children questions about the picture. During this time, I emphasized that although He can talk to us anyway that He wants to, including dreams, God most commonly talks to us through the Bible today. The point is God WANTS us to know Him. He doesn't hide from us. And the best way to "hear" from God is to read the Bible. We also talked about the sinful hearts of the brothers and how we all have sinful hearts and need a savior. We can all feel jealous when someone else gets what we want. Because Jesus gives us His perfect goodness, we are justified in His eyes and God doesn't count our jealousy against us. Instead, he credits us with Christ's perfection -- "rejoicing with those who rejoice." And because He sends the Holy Spirit to redeem and sanctify us, we can choose to fight to kill the sin that so easily entangles, to take jealous thoughts captive to Christ and to strive to share in that person's joy. And our God, who knows all our thoughts,helps us to rejoice when someone else gets a good thing that we might want for ourselves. But we will be battling sinful thoughts all of our lives.

We resumed working on our Attributes of God Books, sticking Golden Letters spelling out "Attributes" on a green rectangle of construction paper. (This was harder than it sounds. I had lightly outlined the letters on the paper and gave each child a sheet of sticker letters. They had to search to find and match the letters.) As we worked we reviewed what the word "attributes" means (things that MAKE God God) and what it means that we are made in His image.



March 3 -- Jacob Flees From Laban, Reconciles with Esau: We had a full house this week, which was wonderful. We learned a new verse and reviewed several old ones as the children arrived.
In our classroom, we colored pictures while I told the story of Jacob's forced departure from Laban's household and his reconciliation with both Laban and Esau.

Feb. 24 -- God Prospers Jacob, Despite Laban's Treachery: We opened our class by singing our next verse in Psalm 121. I had written the verse out, but left out key words, marked by empty rectangles. The children took turns choosing cards with pictures on them and trying to guess in which rectangle they belonged. Each time we put a picture in place we sang the verse. Psalm 121:5-6 talks about the Lord's protection for His people, which goes along with these stories about Jacob.

In our classroom, we started by working on our Attributes of God booklet. The children will earn a "Bookmaking Badge" for completing this. I explained that "attributes" are things that are true about God, they are the things that MAKE him God. People are made in the image of God. I had a brought a mirror and showed the children their reflections and explained that just like the reflection is our image, we are God's image. We are a reflection of Him, we are like Him, but we are also different. Then we talked about what is the same and what is different about an image in a mirror and a real child.

One of God's attributes is that he is all-powerful. No one is more powerful than God. People can be powerful, too. But only God is All-Powerful,the most powerful Being, whose will is never thwarted. That led us into our story about how God had promised to prosper Jacob, and even Laban's attempts could not thwart God's plan for Jacob.