5 PYCLs: 1) GOLDEN TEXT GOLD! 2) 1st COMMANDMENT REVIEW! 3) USE PLAYDOUGH TO ILLUSTRATE HOW LIFE, RATHER THAN MATTER, ANIMATES. 4) MATTER DOESN’T BRING US LIFE AND JOY. 5) TALK ABOUT TIME IN CREATION.
Possible Younger Class Lesson ideas for the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“God the Only Cause and Creator”
for December 5, 2021
by Kerry Jenkins, CS, of House Springs, MO
kerry.helen.jenkins@gmail.com • 314-406-0041
PYCL #1: GOLDEN TEXT GOLD! PRACTICE the “pause, WAIT on God” part…
If Truth/God made all things for Truth, then everything made would certainly express Truth. There would be only honesty, integrity, purity, strength of character, discernment, fact, reality. These would be the ways that Truth is reflected by a creator that is Truth. If Love/God made all things for Love, then Love would be the only thing expressed. There would be only patience, tenderness, understanding, healing power, compassion, etc. reflected by this creator, Love.
Go through each of the synonyms with the children. Write down what a creation of each synonym would look like. Everything that we experience outside of these reflected qualities, is representative of the suggestion that there is more than one creator—that mortal mind has its own agenda and its own ability to “create”. While this certainly does appear, in our experience, we can mitigate these appearances if we are willing to “pause” as citation S26/323:9 says: “Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause, — wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory.” (italics added)
Each example of ugliness, of material greed, unkindness, lack, that appears to our thought needs to cause us to “pause” and look to the true Creator. When we move away from a materially “confined” sense of creation, we move out into an infinite, boundless, joyous, beautiful, complete, intelligent creation! Once you have compiled your list of what God’s creation looks like, what God would create “for himself”, then you can, if you wish, look at how to derail the belief in material conception, or material creation as a competing scenario. But make sure you practice the “pause” and “wait on God” part, that’s the practice that will derail the seeming power of this false idea of creation!
A little “riff” off this idea might be to have them look at the passage that was quoted here from Science and Health and pretend they are pushing a big grocery buggy. It looks like it’s mounded full with “groceries” or maybe these are our “to do” lists of all the things that need to be accomplished before Christmas (this wouldn’t apply so much to the youngest members of our Sunday School). But actually, the only “tasks” we have are the “infinite tasks of truth”!! What are those?
They can mime the way a buggy mounded with heavy groceries might be to push, versus a buggy “mounded” with Truth’s “infinite tasks”.
How burdensome would those tasks be to accomplish?
Can you cross them off a list? Or, are we daily practicing those infinite tasks, which actually revitalize, energize, bring joy and fulfillment, rather than exhaustion, depression, irritation? You can show them what a heavy buggy, versus a suddenly light one might feel like! You can even continue the analogy to include the idea that a burdensome buggy full of materially “created” burdens might gain momentum and pull us too fast down a hill. Or, it might be so heavy pushing up a hill, that it starts to push us backwards!! You could have them pretend to throw all those material ideas right out of their buggy, and fill it with the “infinite tasks of truth” that you listed.
PYCL #2: FIRST COMMANDMENT REVIEW!
This is one of the building blocks of Sunday School from our Manual, so it’s a great one to focus some attention on. Of course, discuss what this commandment means. What kinds of “idols” are we tempted to worship today? Most of the children would agree that they are not so tempted to worship golden calves, or statues of some kind. See if they can suggest some temptations that drag us away from our worship of God/Love/Truth, etc.
Anything that seems to suggest an alternative “source” would be an idol. So, if we are not getting along with a sibling or a friend at school, what would be the “source” for that, or what would have “created” that? That is the suggestion that there is a mortal mind that opposes the one and only Mind.
Are we going to listen to the lie of a separate creation from Mind?
Share a healing where you opposed that lying suggestion of more than one Mind and resolved a disagreement through prayerful acknowledgement that only Mind is the source of our thought.
Come up with some ways we will practice this “one Mind” understanding in the coming week!
Check out what Mary Baker Eddy says about the First Commandment on page 340:15 of her textbook. Look at all the things that obedience to that Command does!!!
PYCL #3: USE PLAYDOUGH TO ILLUSTRATE HOW LIFE, RATHER THAN MATTER, ANIMATES.
In citation S1 we have the definition of “Creator” (583:20-22). Talk about what the word “animating” means. Talk about God’s creation which is “animated”, full of life, movement, grace, intelligence, and so on.
Now hand them each a bit of playdough. Ask them to make a little animal or person out of playdough.
Is it “animate”? Can it do anything? (You can bring in citation B6/Ps 115:1-9) here if you want, especially the part where it speaks of idols “having mouths” but not being able to speak, etc.)
Can we do anything to make that playdough “alive”?
The best we can do is pretend to make it move around and talk with our own voice, right?
It is the same with the stuff under our skull. It is made of matter. It cannot animate, create. Only Life animates.
PYCL #4: MATTER DOESN’T BRING US LIFE AND JOY.
I was thinking about the fabulous waterslide at CedarS Camps this week because we were working this week on funding a new gel coating for it for next summer. Even if your students have never been to CedarS and enjoyed the waterslide, there are many analogies that work here. Let’s use the slide for the moment.
The waterslide is a material “object”. It does not contain within it intelligence, joy, activity. It cannot, of itself, bestow any of these qualities (create them). But, the activities it fosters bring these qualities in abundance! It is a bit like seeing the spiritual idea behind the suggestion of a material “creation”, and becoming aware of how Life is always bestowing activity, joy, energy, laughter, and so on, not through matter, but through recognizing the spiritual fact behind our activities and things. Much as Mary Baker Eddy says on page 269:14 where she talks about resolving “things into thoughts”. Find other “objects” in the student’s lives that illustrate this idea of divine creation.
PYCL #5: TALK ABOUT TIME IN CREATION.
Where does time fit in divine creation? Look at the story in Section 4 where Jesus heals both Jairus’ daughter, and the woman with the “issue of blood” (citation B13/Mark 5:21-42).
Did Jesus seem to run out of time while pausing to heal others on his way to heal the young girl?
Isn’t that the suggestion that our lives are dependent on matter, and on a response to a physical problem within a material time frame?
It seemed too late for the girl by the time Jesus had reached her house. They had already hired professional mourners to do their job! But Jesus knew that her life never depended on being born into matter in the first place. If it never depended on matter for life, then why would its life end because of time and disease?
Enjoy some conversation about time by bringing out a clock or watch.
Is time something God/Life made?
Where does it come from?
Give them the opportunity to think this through. It is an entirely human construct to give us the ability to organize our experience. But it is not a law!
The final section of the lesson deals with the subject of time.
Read some of it together or tell it in your own words. What does Mary Baker Eddy tell us about time?
Is any part of her definition of time (cit. S27/595:17) spiritual in any way?
How does this understanding of time help us with deadlines in our own experience?
What about preparing for exams, for a performance or game, a special date on the calendar that we have to ready ourselves for?
Do we ever really need more time? More “mortal measurements”? More “limits”?
Have a wonderful time in Sunday School this week!
