A Runaway World

Martyn Payne

On Your Marks:

Again and again throughout the Bible we find God searching for those who are lost. In many ways the whole Bible is a story of 'lost and found'. People choose to go their own way and leave the security of God's love but God does not give up on them. God comes searching to bring people home because, as St Augustine's prayer puts it, 'we are restless, until we find our rest in [God]'.

This session is part of a series that explores this theme in stories from the Old and New Testaments. In each we see individuals who are lost for a variety of reasons, but God rejoices to find them again and bring them back to his loving arms.

The following outline focuses on how people became lost in the first place in the story of Adam and Eve, who ran away from God to hide among the trees of Eden.

Get Set:

Use the retelling of this story from The Barnabas Children's Bible, story 4, page 14, 'Adam and Eve are sent away'.

You can find the story in Genesis 3:1-24.

Go!

1. The pain of losing something and the joy of finding it again is one experience that all of us share, young and old.

Start your session with a 'lost and found' game, in which you have hidden some vital visual aids for today's story around your meeting area. Ask the children to help you find them. Suggestions for visuals are:

your own Bible, two 'Lego' or similar model trees, a plastic snake, some artificial leaves, gardening gloves, a baby's blanket, a plastic sword

Be excited and pleased when each item is found again.

Put the visuals to one side and get the children talking about things that they have lost and found and what they felt about it.

2. The more precious the item you lose, the more anxious you will be. We know from Genesis 1 that people (you and me) were God's most precious part of creation. He made them 'in his likeness' and gave them the job of looking after his world.

Suddenly, in chapter 3, these people have run away to lose themselves in the trees of the garden.

Imagine how God felt when he couldn't find them.

God's cry, 'Where are you?' is full of sadness, longing and even fear.

If your meeting area is large enough, play hide and seek, sardine-style! In other words, when anyone finds the person who is hiding, he/she should then join him or her in that hiding place so that the number in hiding grows, squashed together like sardines, until the last person looking finds them all!

Alternatively, the whole group could hide and one person - maybe the leader - comes to find them, calling out 'Where are you?'

3. Tell the story using the visual aids that the children found earlier.

Your own Bible: this story comes right at the beginning of God's special book and explains how people became lost and cut off from God.

Two model trees: in the beautiful garden there were two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God made it clear that the two trees should be left untouched.

The plastic snake: but then, in the shape of a snake, came the temptation to doubt and disobey God. The snake plants in Adam and Eve's minds doubts about God's instructions.

An apple: the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil looks good and they were tempted to eat it.

Take a bite!: they decided to go their own way and not God's.

Artificial leaves: suddenly they felt ashamed. They knew they both had broken God's rules and they also became fearful of each other and covered themselves up with the leaves.

Call out 'Where are you?': God came looking for them, even though they had run to hide among the trees.

Baby blanket: because they had chosen to disobey God's loving rules, everything else goes wrong. The woman will have a tough time when it comes to having babies.

Gardening gloves: And the man will have a hard time pulling up the weeds and thorns that will now grow.

A plastic sword: the beautiful garden, especially the other tree, will now be out of bounds to them.

So begins the lostness in the Bible stories. But God keeps looking for people because it does not stop loving them. Read Genesis 3:21, which shows us that God still cares deeply for those he has created.

Talk about the story:

I wonder why God gave Adam and Eve a simple rule about the two trees?

I wonder why Adam and Eve decided that God's rules could be broken?

I wonder why God was so angry and sad?

I wonder what would have happened if they had kept to God's rules?

I wonder why God had to send them out of the garden?

I wonder what would have happened if they had eaten the fruit from the other tree?

4. This story of getting lost and being looked for starts with making a wrong choice. Try playing a Choice Circus game with your group in which half attempt to persuade someone who is Eve not to eat from the tree, while the other half try and persuade her to eat it.

Do this again with Adam in the middle. Are there different arguments for and against this time?

5. The one wrong choice leads to lots of other bad things happening, a bit like one small lie tends to lead to more and more, and often worse, lies.

First they blame each other, then they blame the snake; then come fear, problems, dangers, difficulties and pain. All this comes in to spoil God's world. No wonder God did not want them to eat of the fruit of the tree.

Cut out of two sheets of paper two large cross-section apple outlines. Ask the group first to suggest some of the bad things that are spoiling God's world and write these up on one of the apple outlines. On the second outline ask for suggestions for some of the good things that are being chased away in God's world.

Now give out some smaller outline apples for the children (in groups) and also some newspapers and magazines (take care what articles are in them, though), so they can cut out pictures or headlines for each apple that they have to correspond to the good and bad results of choices in the world.

When their two apples are filled, talk about how the world is now a mixture of all these things, good and bad.

I wonder how we can sort all this out? I wonder what you would do, if you were God?

We know that God did not give up on his world. He already had a plan in mind and there is possibly a tiny clue in Genesis 3:15. Can you find it?

(Hint: it is said that the heel is badly bruised when someone is nailed to a cross.)

6. For a time of prayer, put a small globe in the middle to represent the world that God had created.

Now hand out some Post-it shaped like speech bubbles but which could also be seen as apple shapes (with a stalk).

Invite the children to think about the choices they will be making in the coming week.

As a sign of making a choice for good, they could put down one of those Post-it shapes around the globe. Suggest choices like:

I choose kindness not revenge.

I choose friendship not hatred.

I choose to smile and not to frown.

What other suggestions can the children make for good choices?

7. Key thought: although the world has run away from God, God does not give up on the world. He comes looking for us (you and me) because he loves us, regardless of the bad choices we have made.

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