Family Devotion 7: Solomon Builds a Temple
Gather together: Graham crackers, icing, leftover Halloween candies, food coloring or edible glitter, pretzel rods.
Read together: the story of Solomon building the temple in 1 Kings 6.
Summary: Solomon, David's son, knew that the people of Israel needed something more sturdy and long-lasting than the tent they had been using for worship. He built a temple that was big enough for all the people to come to worship God.
It was more than big enough, it was spectacular! Solomon used the best of everything to create the place where people would come to learn about God and be together singing and praising God.
Do together: Build a temple! Using the graham crackers and frosting construct a temple. The proportions of Solomon's temple would be 3" wide by 9" long and 4" high. Use pretzel sticks to make pillars or columns. Cover the inside structure with gold-tinted frosting and the outside with white to look like gold and marble. Decorate with whatever candies you have to make shapes of doves and olive branches.
Reflection: One time a group of people from a church went to help rebuild homes that were damaged during a hurricane. One group was replacing a window and putting up wood trim around the window. One volunteer put some of the trim up a little bit crooked. When another volunteer saw that it was crooked, she told him it needed to be fixed. He said to her, "everything in this house is crooked. Even before the storm the house had millions of problems. They should be happy they have any trim!"
The woman volunteer looked around and realized that the man was right -- there were lots of problems with the house. But he was not right about fixing the trim. God wants us to do our best -- to bring our A game -- especially when we are trying to share God's love with others. The woman took down the crooked trim and fixed it. She thought about Solomon's temple and how the volunteer team could make the little house more spectacular, so everyone who saw it would know that God's love can do spectacular things.
Discuss together: Was it sometimes hard to put together the graham cracker temple? Sometimes the crackers break or the icing doesn't hold right. It takes work and patience and it could be easy to give up.
It was like that with Solomon's temple too -- hard work and at times people thought it was too much work.
Have you ever wanted to give up doing something that was too hard? Have you ever done something that was really hard or took a lot of work and afterwards thought, "I'm glad I did that -- it is my best work!"?
God wants our best. God made us each with gifts so that we can do spectacular things. What are some things that you think God wants you to do really well this week?
Pray together: God, help me to keep going when things get hard and I want to give up. Help me to do my best and use all that I have to share your love in spectacular ways this week (name them).
Amen.
Read together: the story of Solomon building the temple in 1 Kings 6.
Summary: Solomon, David's son, knew that the people of Israel needed something more sturdy and long-lasting than the tent they had been using for worship. He built a temple that was big enough for all the people to come to worship God.
It was more than big enough, it was spectacular! Solomon used the best of everything to create the place where people would come to learn about God and be together singing and praising God.
Do together: Build a temple! Using the graham crackers and frosting construct a temple. The proportions of Solomon's temple would be 3" wide by 9" long and 4" high. Use pretzel sticks to make pillars or columns. Cover the inside structure with gold-tinted frosting and the outside with white to look like gold and marble. Decorate with whatever candies you have to make shapes of doves and olive branches.
Reflection: One time a group of people from a church went to help rebuild homes that were damaged during a hurricane. One group was replacing a window and putting up wood trim around the window. One volunteer put some of the trim up a little bit crooked. When another volunteer saw that it was crooked, she told him it needed to be fixed. He said to her, "everything in this house is crooked. Even before the storm the house had millions of problems. They should be happy they have any trim!"The woman volunteer looked around and realized that the man was right -- there were lots of problems with the house. But he was not right about fixing the trim. God wants us to do our best -- to bring our A game -- especially when we are trying to share God's love with others. The woman took down the crooked trim and fixed it. She thought about Solomon's temple and how the volunteer team could make the little house more spectacular, so everyone who saw it would know that God's love can do spectacular things.
Discuss together: Was it sometimes hard to put together the graham cracker temple? Sometimes the crackers break or the icing doesn't hold right. It takes work and patience and it could be easy to give up.
It was like that with Solomon's temple too -- hard work and at times people thought it was too much work.
Have you ever wanted to give up doing something that was too hard? Have you ever done something that was really hard or took a lot of work and afterwards thought, "I'm glad I did that -- it is my best work!"?
God wants our best. God made us each with gifts so that we can do spectacular things. What are some things that you think God wants you to do really well this week?
Pray together: God, help me to keep going when things get hard and I want to give up. Help me to do my best and use all that I have to share your love in spectacular ways this week (name them).
Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment