PYCLs — Don’t be fooled by pretty clothes! Talk about locking doors, Moses, “The House with the Colored Windows,” fog & how the upcoming week has & can change the world!
Possible Younger Class Lesson ideas for the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“Unreality”
for Sunday, April 2, 2023
by Kerry Jenkins, CS, of House Springs, MO
kerry.helen.jenkins@gmail.com • 314-406-0041
PYCL #1: Don’t be fooled by pretty clothes!
I feel like there are so many ways to make this a theme with the littles in Sunday School this week. “Don’t believe everything you see, or feel, or hear!” or, as our Golden Text says: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God.”
Sometimes error can look pretty amazing. It can present itself as “fun”, “special”, “exciting”, “exclusive”. But we need to be ready to listen with our spiritual senses that we have been developing over the last few Bible lessons!
Our spiritual senses will always tell us if we are being truly kind, inclusive, loving, genuinely fun (not at someone else’s expense or endangering ourselves or our relationships with others). Spirit gives us the true view of beauty through the light that Spirit shines on everything. Spirit leads us to truth. (citation S27/505:16-17, 21-22)
Bring in something really ugly, I don’t know what that will be, maybe you have some kind of super ugly stuffed animal or doll, or just a picture of someone with a very angry face? If you are feeling really creative you could make an ugly paper doll. Then bring a bunch of what look like fancy clothes, jewelry (fake), hats, whatever you can come up with.
Have the children “dress up” the ugly thing, whatever it is.
Does it suddenly become something beautiful? No, it’s just wearing clothes or shiny jewelry. None of that can change the ugliness. Error might present itself as something lovely, beautiful, tempting. But that “outside” stuff never really changes something that is wrong. Pretty clothes and jewelry can’t make something evil into something good. And we can tell the difference!
PYCL #2: Lock your doors against error.
With the very young it can be fun to play any version of “locking the doors against error”. You can do this with hands on the table opening and closing to admit good or bad thoughts. You can mime using a key to lock out bad thinking. Or you can give each child a real key if you have some laying about that are no longer useful to you, or make some out of cardboard or stiff paper.
Maybe you can share citation S4/234:9-12 which encourages us to “guard against false beliefs as watchfully as we bar our doors against the approach of thieves and murderers.”
What makes a great “lock”?
What if we are really good at identifying the error so we know ahead to shut the “door” and lock out the error?
What if the error is something like “I’m not good at that”?
“I’m too shy to have fun with new people.”?
Can we learn to tell the difference between error and God’s thoughts?
PYCL #3: Tell about Moses’ encounters with error.
In citations B8 and B9 (Ex 3:1,7,10 and Ex 4:1-8) we see Moses struggling with a lie that he isn’t adequate to the task of leading the Children of Israel out of captivity in Egypt. God gives him proofs that Moses’ personal sense of his ability is not the power that will lead to freedom.
God demonstrates for Moses that it is Moses’ own false sense of self that can mislead. He asks Moses to throw his staff on the ground and when it turns into a serpent God asks Moses to pick it up by its most dangerous part, the tail! Yikes! Instead of biting him, Moses’ ability to overcome his fear and to obediently listen to God’s encouragement, allows him to turn that experience into a staff to lean on.
In a similar way Moses is asked to put his hand into his robe and when he obeys he finds that it is covered in a dreaded, fatal disease. He found that, once again, as he obeyed God and did not give in to fear and to what his material senses told him, that his senses were not to be trusted. His hand was perfectly free of leprosy when he followed God’s directions.
What does this tell us today?
When we encounter evidence that tells us we should be afraid — that we don’t have the ability to do something we are being asked to do–we can obediently look to God for the truth.
Our demonstration of harmony in these cases will bring us the strength that we need to carry out a challenging mission, even if it doesn’t seem like one as important as leading a people out of slavery to freedom!
PYCL #4: Story of the “House with the Colored Windows”.
I love the analogy in this really old story from a collection that was around when I was a child. You don’t have to have a copy to share the general idea. It involves two children who are watching a white horse in a pasture below their house. The set of windows they are looking out of have several different colored panes and they can choose whether to look out of a colored one, or a clear one. They enjoy laughing about all the colors that the horse appears to be.
The analogy that is drawn is that when we are looking through a material lens at things, or using only material sense to judge things, we can be misled. Our false view does not change the truth (in this case, the truth that the horse was always white).
You could bring in some different colors of cellophane if you can get your hands on some, and have the children try it out for themselves with items that you might bring, or have in the classroom.
See if you can come up with some things in life that we tend to misjudge and discuss the idea that perhaps we are “looking through the wrong lens”.
PYCL #5: Talk about fog.
Have any of the children been in a thick fog before? If you live near the ocean you may have truly experienced a fog that you can get lost in!
Share some pictures of fog if you don’t think they are aware of what it is like. What might that do if we are trying to find our way somewhere.
Think about a road trip in a car or just a hike along a cliff edge. All we can see is what is right in front of us. There are a whole bunch of angles that we can talk about here. We can address the fact that the fog is only near the ground (ground clouds), that if you get up in the air it is sunny!
You can talk about how the sun burns away the fog, just as Truth shines a “light” on error making it disappear. You can talk about how things look funny and sometimes even scary in the fog, only to turn into trees or rocks when we get close up! In the same way, when we get fooled by error, we can end up being scared of nothing!
Look together at citation S9/205:15 for a statement about being “Befogged in error…”
What kind of “fog” is Mary Baker Eddy talking about here?
Have fun in Sunday School this week!!
Warren’s P.S. Below is an Easter-season offer to see for free the outstanding BibleRoads Easter talk that Christie Hanzlik recommends in her Met this week! If you already saw it and paid $20 for it as a one-time fee, the BibleRoads team is happy to help set you up with the many other benefits in the Gift offer below. You can reach them at team@bibleroads.com at any time.
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BACKGROUND of BONUS GIFT OFFER:
Here are some of the excellent questions posed in this talk with a link whereby non-members can watch it and, if they wish, share their gratitude.
Christie Hanzlik recommended in her CedarS Met this week:
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