PYCLs— 1) WHAT IS LIFE? 2) WHAT HAPPENED TO ENOCH’S BODY? 3) THINK on WHAT’S ETERNAL. 4) DOES GOD GIVE AND TAKE AWAY LIFE? 5) IS A PURPLE ELEPHANT WITH GREEN SPOTS REAL?
CedarS PYCLs, Possible Younger Class Lessons for the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“Are Sin, Disease, and Death Real?”
for April 10, 2022
by Kerry Jenkins, CS, House Springs, MO
kerry.helen.jenkins@gmail.com (314) 406-0041
PYCL #1: WHAT IS LIFE?
I’m not sure that the youngest crowd is quite up to this week’s deep dive into understanding the powerlessness of death. But we can always ask about what it means to be “alive”. What are the qualities of life? Yes, there is breathing, moving, eating, sleeping, running, etc. But what does it mean to really “exist”? What is God as Life? Being that is Life must be vibrant, joyous, healthy, and ever-lasting.
Can matter last forever? No!
Read the last verse of the 23rd Psalm from the Responsive Reading and its spiritual interpretation from Science and Health where Mary Baker Eddy says: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of Love forever.”
What is the “consciousness of Love”? Is that a limited “place”?
Where is this consciousness of Love?
Talk about consciousness meaning being “awake” or alert?
Is being awake a quality of Life? It certainly is!
Now think about being conscious of Love. What does that require? Does it require athleticism, talent, brilliance in school, creativity? What if we were always conscious of Love? What would life be like? Would we be conscious of any kind of evil (sin, disease, death?)?
You could bring in a small bowl filled with something like M&M’s or something healthy, filled so full that nothing else goes in. If we are conscious of Love, we cannot be conscious of something evil at the same time, because Love sort of “fills all the cracks”–like the bowl is filled to the top with these tasty M&M’s or whatever. Then, of course, share them…
PYCL #2: WHAT HAPPENED TO ENOCH’S BODY?
Enoch is in Section 2 and you can read those couple of verses from Gen. 5:23, 24 and Heb. 11:5 to introduce him. What happened to him?
What does it mean to be “translated”? Was anyone else in the Bible “translated” (Moses, Elijah, Jesus…anyone else?)?
Why would the body disappear? Could we learn something from this?
What do we do to work towards that state where the body is no longer a burden or a hindrance to living eternally? Could it be that we can focus more and more deeply on those infinite Life qualities we discussed in Pycl #1 until we are so conscious of Life/Love, that the body and its mortality no longer appear to us or others? What does this say to us about death? I don’t know if this is too sophisticated for the younger children, but I like to think of the body as our present highest concept of self.
PYCL #3: THINK ABOUT WHAT IS ETERNAL.
Like focusing on life, we can focus on what is eternal or everlasting. Check out citation S10/201:7 (only) “We cannot build safely on false foundations.” What does that mean, ask the students.
Talk about foundations that last, versus ones that get eroded or washed away easily.
You can talk about “digging down” to rock so that there is nothing that shifts or changes under our “house”. How is this like what it is telling us in citations B5 and B6? (Prov. 13:14 and Ps. 1:1,2)
We are always living from a foundation. It is either a wobbly one that is based on mortality that shifts and changes depending on our mood or others’, on friendships and family relations, on being healthy or not, on succeeding at something or “failing”.
Or, is our foundation for life based on that rock that is the Christ who teaches us who God and man really are in a reliable, stable, and harmonious relationship to one another.
Now you can build a model together with blocks or random items. Build one building that is not even, or secure, build another together that is balanced on a solid, flat surface.
Why does one structure last longer than another?
Can they see that if something is eternal, it must also be built on a spiritually solid foundation?
PYCL #4: DOES GOD GIVE AND TAKE AWAY LIFE?
Life and death are opposites. They cannot come from the same place. Read or tell the story of Elijah and explain why he was so sad. You can include some of the history that came before this with Elijah. He felt as if he had failed because he didn’t think that there were any others who worshiped God. But God didn’t “take away his life”, instead He fed him twice and then took him to Mt. Horeb where Elijah had a vision of what the power of God really looked like.
You can talk if you like, about how this power of God manifested in the story of Elijah at the cave. Elijah was afraid of Jezebel’s threat, it was scary and vicious. God showed him at the cave that power doesn’t come in the earthquake, wind or fire, but in the stillness of a small voice!
Can anyone in the class think of a time when they felt that kind of presence and power?
God didn’t take away Elijah’s life. Life can’t take away life because the very definition of Life includes eternity, not death.
This might be a good place to use a hula hoop to illustrate the idea of eternity.
There is no beginning, no ending.
PYCL #5: IS A PURPLE ELEPHANT WITH GREEN SPOTS REAL?
Well, if we saw one, we would be confident that it had been painted that way! With that in mind we can touch on the answer to the title of this week’s lesson. Things can certainly look real. But if we actually know that even when they look real, they are actually like a painted elephant, we can lose our fear of the discomfort of sickness, the lure of sin, the fear even, of death.
Think together about just the idea of accepting that this triad of errors are just that, errors, meaning mistaken beliefs. If they are not actually true, do we have to fear them— even if they feel true?
We have lots and lots of examples of healing, in the Bible and the periodicals and on Wednesday evening testimony meetings, where these three things are truly healed.
Where did the disease go?
Or, where did the disobedience, anger, frustration go when we had those healings?
Share some of Jesus’ healings such as the man with the withered hand…how did that hand just “regenerate”?
Or, you could use the story in this week’s lesson of the man with bone disease that Mary Baker Eddy brought back from death.
How did that hip bone suddenly become firm, healthy, strong?
Maybe we could consider the idea of starting with the assumption that error is erroneous, the next time we are faced with sadness, anger, sickness, etc.
Let’s try it this week and share our results next week!!
Have a great week in Sunday School!
