PYCLs: 1) DEMONSTRATE THE GOLDEN TEXT 2) WHAT IS MATTER VS. SPIRIT 3) HOW’D DANIEL KNOW WHAT THE KING DREAMED?! 4) TRY PRACTICING CITATION S15 5) MEMORIZE CIT. B16, VERSE 10
Possible Younger Class Lesson ideas for the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“MATTER”
for March 20, 2022
by Kerry Jenkins, CS, of House Springs, MO
kerry.helen.jenkins@gmail.com • 314-406-0041
PYCL #1: DEMONSTRATE THE GOLDEN TEXT/Jeremiah 23:29 “my word is like a fire…& like a hammer”
Okay, I might get in trouble for this, but I would be tempted to have the children try out the Golden Text, weather permitting, outdoors. I would bring matches or lighter and a small wad of paper (not good in a dry place where wildfire is an issue!). Let the children see how the flame consumes the paper.
Then, with safety glasses on everyone (you can use almost any glasses but they need to fully cover the eyes unless people are standing way back, and take a big hammer to some rocks. Make sure you find rocks that are not too hard to break because you will want to let the kids have a go if you can get safety glasses that stay on their faces.
After you have done these things, try coming back in and reading the Golden Text together and talking about what it means. What is God’s “word”? What kind of power is that?! I feel like after a demonstration, this passage might just come alive for them. Can you share an example from your own life where the power of God’s word was clear for you?
PYCL #2: WHAT IS MATTER VERSUS SPIRIT, OR SPIRITUAL THINGS?
Bring in some items to hold (books, a stone, a pencil, anything). Are they material? What are some spiritual things? You can come up with a list. Things like love, gentleness, truth, generosity, intelligence. These are spiritual, and they probably look a lot like the list you may have come up with last week for things that are “substance”.
Now, can you hold any of these in your hand?
Are they less important because you can’t hold them?
How do we know they exist?
Can we take a hammer or a lighter/match to these qualities and destroy them?
Can you do that with the things that you held?
Can the students maybe get a sense of how the qualities that are spiritual are real, eternal, substantial, while matter is not?
This is true even of things that we cannot “hold” but are not from God, like cruelty, hatred, lies, sickness. Even though we can’t hold onto those qualities, they are not substantial because Love overwhelmingly destroys them.
We have healing after healing in the Bible and in our periodicals to prove this.
(You can mention a couple of week’s ago’s example of David and Saul and how David was always able to avoid getting hurt by Saul). In this week’s lesson we have Jesus healing a man with a withered hand. That goes against all the “laws” of matter.
But healing is in line with the harmony of Spirit’s laws, so the man is healed!
PYCL #3: HOW DID DANIEL KNOW WHAT THE KING DREAMED?!!
Read or retell the story from Sections 2 and 3 about Nebuchadnezzar and his dream. Help them understand that the king couldn’t remember his own dream here. He didn’t just want his dream interpreted, he wanted them to tell him what his dream was!
How did Daniel do this? Do the students think this is possible? Why or why not?
Can they think of a circumstance where the ideas in this story would be useful today?
[Share Warren’s application ideas in this week’s GEM’s online about a test on comparing books he hadn’t read yet and know this is true for your refection of divine Mind too!]
Are there things that would make life more peaceful, more joyful, more abundant, if we really knew what the consciousness of Mind was sharing with us?
In the case of this story we find that Daniel explains to the king that he dreamed about a giant “image” made of different materials.
Talk about how each material as it went down the image/idol, became less and less valuable, until it was standing on a mixture of clay and iron. What is clay like compared to metal?
Would it even hold a big statue up?
This is a great symbol for how matter falls down on itself and has a really shaky foundation, no matter how beautiful or valuable it appears at first. You can replicate this by building together a small-scale version of this kind of image. Build it with a few nuts and bolts and magnets to keep them together, then set it on sand or flour and see how it will just sink in and get crooked, and if it is heavy enough on top, will tip over.
Notice that as part of the dream Daniel tells us that the stone that was thrown at the image turned into a great mountain that “filled the whole earth”. Daniel tells us this is the kingdom of God which breaks apart all material “kingdoms”. It can help us to understand the solidity and power of God’s kingdom especially if the children are a little older and are aware of the war in Ukraine and want to understand how we can pray about it. This kingdom fills all the space of these smaller, material “powers” and governments. No matter the appearance, God’s kingdom is there.
PYCL #4: TRY PRACTICING CITATION S15/71:10
This citation tells us that if we close our eyes we can dream that we see a flower, smell it, touch it, that we can do this for landscapes and men and women. This shows us that they are a formation of thought rather than matter. (If you want to get really technical and your students are older, check out what quantum physics tells us about objects we see! They are only what our own eyes perceive—light bouncing off an object, they have no substance except as electrons that are charged opposite to us and keep us from actually “touching” them—sorry, too quick an explanation—but you get the idea!).
Have the children close their eyes and imagine something, like the flower.
Discuss the idea that a flower might actually be something we form in our thought and then see, rather than something that is material.
How do we create art or music? Where does it come from? Is it material? With older children consider discussing citation S17/267 “Every object in material thought will be destroyed, but the spiritual idea, whose substance is in Mind, is eternal.”
PYCL #5: MEMORIZE CITATION B16, JUST VERSE 10. “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”
This is such a powerful statement of God’s power over the suggestion of matter. With the littles, just focus on the part that tells us to “Be still, and know that I am God” I once saw this broken down into parts and I think that’s really interesting: just “be”, then “be still”, then “be still and know” then the whole sentence. It is really inspiring to think about these component parts.
Why do we need to be still”? What does being still mean?
Is it just standing or sitting without movement?
Think about stillness of thought, how do we discover the ability to have our thought still rather than always thinking about something, but instead waiting for God to move it?
Think about Mary Baker Eddy’s Poem that says: “O’er waiting harp strings of the mind, there sweeps a strain…”. What are those “waiting” strings? Are they just doodling out a tune all the time, thinking about what will happen after Sunday School, who said what, what we are having for dinner???
Or, are they waiting for divine Mind to fill them with music—to energize us in our activities, inspire us with wisdom and intelligence and creativity?
Let each child hold a timer for one minute of stillness, while the rest of you has to sit, or thirty seconds. The second part of the verse tells us that God will be exalted.
What does exalted mean?
Can we see this as symbolic of putting God first in our motives, before the “heathen”, or material pursuits?
Have a great week in Sunday School!
