PYCLs: Write God’s laws on your heart with loving attention to each one daily!

PYCLs: Write God’s laws on a heart-shaped paper. Who/what is God?  Laws vs. magic. Act out the Lazarus story. Where’s the spiritual seeing in other Bible Lesson healings.
Possible Younger Class Lesson ideas for the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on

“God”
for Sunday, July 2, 2023

by Kerry Jenkins, CS, of House Springs, MO
kerry.helen.jenkins@gmail.com • 314-406-0041

BONUS! As CedarS Care House Practitioner again this week, Kerry demonstrated her teaching ideas below (and more) on stage in her 10-minute Breakfast  “Prac Talks.” All ages find this resource to be a very inspiring and helpful way to start each day here and at home.  Click here & then on the Prac Talk(s) of your choice to hear it. 

PYCL #1: Put God’s laws (Commandments) on a heart-shaped paper.

Cut out heart shapes large enough to write the 10 Commandments on, or to write the reduced versions that are Jesus’ two great commands. Go through these together and then pin the heart to the front of each child after sharing the verse in the Responsive Reading Jer. 31:33 where God tells us that He will put his law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts. Talk about what that really means!
[Warren: According to an online Download summarizing my Moses reenactments in CedarS Bible Lands Park that means:  Write God’s laws on your heart with loving attention to each one daily by loving and living the freedom of: 1) No worries! 2) No obsessions with things/bodies! 3) No vain repetitions/prayers. 4) No forgetting our original Sabbath perfection! 5) No disrespect for proper authorities. 6) No anger, name-calling, put-downs… 7) No lust or broken promises. 8) No focus on GETTING happiness (but instead on GIVING it.)  9) No false witnessing or fable repeating. 10) No jealousy.]

PYCL #2: Who/what is God?

Is God a giant strong man in the sky? If not, what is God? Learn the synonyms for God from citation S1/587:5.
How do the synonyms help us understand God better?
Can the littles act out the qualities of each synonym? Maybe they can be silly or lively for Life, gentle and give hugs for Love, draw a beautiful picture or admire something beautiful you can see for Soul, and so on.

I think it’s really interesting to think about this passage from Science and Health: “If we pray to God as a corporeal person, this will prevent us from relinquishing the human doubts and fears which attend such a belief…”. (citation S4/13:20) So, a good question to ask ourselves when we are struggling with healing is “is my picture of God too human like?” “Am I limiting God because I think of God as a more “supernatural” version of man?”. Our view of God needs to be spiritual, without matter at all.

Hopefully Saturday morning CedarS will post a video (or at least an audio) of the Whippoorwill cabin singing a synonym song during our breakfast “Prac Talk.”  That might be fun to teach the children if we are successful at capturing it for you!

PYCL #3: Laws vs. magic.

We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but it is still an essential ingredient in this Bible lesson when you are looking at these amazing Bible stories together. Talk about how we have good laws in our country. They are flawed, but they try to be fair. But, as we know, we can break these laws. Then there are laws like the law of gravity, which you can illustrate easily by dropping something.

Ask if they have to understand what gravity is in order to demonstrate it, or to have it apply to them. Obviously not! Christian Science healing operates in the same way as universal law, like gravity. It applies to everyone, embraces everyone. This law of Love is God. This is why Elijah could continuously feed the widow woman from one handful of meal and some oil. (Or why Jesus could heal the blind man and raise Lazarus from the dead!). You can deeply explain that a miracle is like magic, it is something that happens outside of law. While healing is within that law.

PYCL #4: Act out the story of Lazarus.

This one is fun to act out with small children. Use a bedsheet to wrap up Lazarus in. You can make the cave underneath the table. Take turns being Lazarus. Why do you think that Jesus was able to raise him from the dead?

PYCL #5: Where is the spiritual seeing in other healings in the Bible (this week’s lesson).

There are some wonderful healings in the Bible this week including 1 Kings 17:1, 8-16/cit. B4, Jesus healing a man who was born blind. John 9:1-11, 32,33/cit. B8, and raising Lazarus from the dead, John 11:1,3,4, 17, 21-27, 32-35, 41-44/cit. B11.
All of these healings took spiritual sight, that is sight that does not take material evidence at “face value”, but digs deeper to understand God’s power and presence in our daily lives. Of course, there are multiple layers in these stories that you can bring out depending on the children’s age.

The man born blind is a great example of dismissing any cause but God/Good–rejecting the lie of genetics. There is the fact that the man “saw” for the first time, and it changed everything for him. Others, who knew him from childhood didn’t even “see” or believe it was the same man at first.

Have a great Sunday School class!