5 PYCLs: 1) TRY TO MIX LIGHT & DARKNESS. 2) BRING IN WINDOW WASHING MATERIALS. 3) DRAW A DIAGRAM for citation S4/295. 4) DID GOD CREATE A WELL FOR HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS? 5) CHANGING EVIDENCE.
Possible Younger Class Lesson ideas for the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“REALITY”
for Sunday, September 25, 2022
by Kerry Jenkins, CS, of House Springs, MO
kerry.helen.jenkins@gmail.com • 314-406-0041
PYCL #1: TRY TO MIX LIGHT AND DARKNESS.
Read the Golden Text together from 1st John 1:5 “…God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” Go into a dark room or bring a box that is big enough to cut a small hole and shine a flashlight in through that hole.
If you are in a dark room, turn on the light and pose the question “where did the darkness go?”
If you are using a box, it’s a little trickier but you can shine the flashlight into the hole and ask whether the dark “escaped” from the box somehow.
In either case it is a way to demonstrate the idea that darkness cannot coexist with light.
We can seemingly shut out light, but the minute light enters, the darkness disappears.
Like God and God’s goodness, error and Truth cannot coexist, good and evil, and so on.
One completely obliterates the other.
You can also bring in mixtures of things, or use analogies of cooking, or bring a drink mix to stir into a pitcher of water (and share the drink afterwards) as examples of things that you can mix together. These things behave differently than light and dark, God and error.
PYCL #2: BRING IN WINDOW WASHING MATERIALS.
There is much in this lesson, implied and otherwise, about how we can become better seers of light/reality, as we lose the density of materiality.
Using citation S4/295:16 we can work to illustrate how mortal mind can be “cleaned” to become less material, more “transparent” to Spirit’s light. Think of ways that we can accomplish this.
You can find a few phrases that help us in this direction in this week’s lesson.
For example, in citation S11/272:3-5 we are told that we can gain spiritual sense by becoming “…honest, unselfish, loving, and meek.”
How do these qualities help us be more transparent for God’s light to shine through?
Doesn’t our Godlikeness shine when we express unselfishness by sitting patiently with someone who needs our love and company even when we would rather be playing?
Make a list of examples.
Give them each some materials to go and wash some needy windows in your Sunday School.
PYCL #3: USE THE SAME PASSAGE FROM citation S4/295 TO DRAW A DIAGRAM.
I love this passage because for so many years I didn’t think about it carefully and one question really turned it around for me!
Who or what part of that imagery is “man”?
I’d always just thought, “oh, man is the window”.
But no, man is the “manifestation of God”, which, in this case, is the light!! How cool is that?!
Have the children draw and label a diagram of this paragraph with light coming through a window.
(So, the light is man, maybe they draw a representative sun as “God”, the window pane is mortal mind, the walls, matter…?
If they want to they can label the light with their own name. You get the idea.
They can color it or sketch it, and then maybe copy out the passage underneath the picture.
If the children are young you can pre-print out copies of this paragraph for them to draw above.
I’ll bet drawing it will make the message really sink in.
PYCL #4: DID GOD CREATE A WELL FOR HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS?
Read the story of Hagar in citation B5/Gen.21:9, 10, 12-20. When you have told it or read it to them/had them read it aloud, ask if the well was there all along, or did God make it “magically” appear? Remember she didn’t appear to be following a path or road through the wilderness, there were no towns.
How does this relate to our lives here and now?
Do we sometimes get blinded by our troubles and think there is no help, no “well” to quench our “thirst”, or struggles to find joy, supply of some kind, health, etc.?
Do you have an example of a need being met in a surprising way—especially by something just being pointed out to you as having been there all along?
Are there other Biblical examples of this kind of thing?
Do they think that maybe good is always present, but we need the “light” to see it?
What light is that? Is it gratitude? Spiritual consciousness? Peace?
PYCL #5: CHANGING EVIDENCE.
The passage in citation S24/297:12-16 is always arresting to thought. “Change the evidence, and that disappears which before seemed real to this false belief…”
We don’t ordinarily think in terms of changing evidence.
Evidence is supposed to be the unchanging proof that something is substantial or real.
But coupled with the story of Saul’s conversion to Paul in citation B13/Acts 26:1,9,12-19, we can see how this is done.
To Paul, there was evidence that Christians were an evil to be destroyed.
The light of Truth changed that evidence for him. It caused him to see the goodness, the vital nature of Christ. And he experienced not only this conversion but a healing of blindness which was symbolic of how he had been blind to Christ and needed to see “anew”.
When you think about this story and about the theme of light in this lesson, you can also see that light changes evidence all the time. In a dark room you might think it is empty of anything inside it.
But turn on a light, and the furniture, cat, paintings, suddenly become visible.
You can speak with older children about how we are talking in this lesson about spiritual reality, which can only be perceived with spiritual sense and proven through spiritual demonstration/ healing/ gratitude, and so on.
Our material senses might fool us into thinking that some people are “bad”, as Paul thought Christians to be. But using spiritual sense we can discover the true nature of man!
Have a great week in Sunday School.
