Sunday School October 31

Pre-K and K:
 God Provides Water
Just as God provided water for the Israelites long ago, he kindly supplies our needs today. (Exodus 17). 

"The Lord watches over you."  Psalm 121:5a  
 
1st to 5th Grade: 

To begin Sunday School, we read The Runaway Bunny. We were amazed at the children’s level of attention and how much of the message of that book they gleaned, especially as we applied the lesson of Jonah to that book. 

We talked about the story of Jonah and then asked them to draw the connection between the two stories. Jonah, like The Runaway Bunny, ran away from God and what God called him to do. And in the same way that the bunny’s mother promises always to come after the bunny, God came after Jonah. This is a picture of grace: God first sent a storm that rocked the ship he was sailing on. When Jonah realized the storm was related to his disobedience, he had the sailors throw him overboard. Another grace in this story is that the Scripture tells us that those sailors believed in the true God—without Jonah’s disobedience and admission of sin, the sailors would never have known and believed in the true God. 

Secondly, God sent a whale to swallow up Jonah and then spit him out on the beach after 3 days. In this pit Jonah was able to see his disobedience clearly and prayed, “The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head…yet you brought my life up from the Pit, O Lord my God.” (Jonah 2:5-6). Jonah finally obeyed and went to Ninevah to preach to the people there.

In the same way that Jonah was imprisoned by his sin, so many people are literally and metaphorically imprisoned. We reached out to some women that are in prison from things they have done by creating drawings with messages of grace to send with a parishioner attending a weekend retreat for these women. The message of Jonah is one of consequence for sin, but ultimately, grace from God for our disobedience and applies to all of us who are trapped by the bondage of sin.

 

“As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple… Deliverance belongs to the Lord!” (Jonah 2:7, 10)