Noah, He Built Him an Arky-Arky

On Sunday, our Sunday School Improv team took on the story of Noah. We gave the children puppets, so that they could act out the act of going into the ark. We had some children act as rain clouds. We had a child who played the dove.

We did not sing the song that lasts forever, the one about Noah, Who Built Him an Arky-Arky Out of Hickory Barky-Barky. We ended up with extra time, and I wished that I had looked up the lyrics. I still remember some of them, but not all of them.

To me, that's the message here. The things we teach children really do stick. I can sing all sorts of songs that I learned in Sunday School. I remember a 5th grade teacher teaching us that men have one less rib than women, because Adam had to give up one of his ribs. You probably say, "Surely he was joking." He seemed serious to me, so much so that when I got to Biology and Anatomy classes later, I was a bit shocked to find out that we all have the same amount of ribs in our ribcage, unless something strange and/or dreadful has happened.

I'm always amazed at how much children seem to love Vacation Bible School. It seems a bit too much like school to me, full of boring worksheets. But I forget how much some children love those kind of things.

I love this Sunday School experiment that we're doing. We stay energized and fresh; I'm rereading some of these Bible stories for the first time in a very long time. I'm in charge of the week that we do Jacob and Esau. I'd forgotten how much deception was in those stories. My approach will be to remind the children that we don't need to trick God into blessing us, that we don't have to worry about God liking someone else better than us.

For me, the ultimate Good News in these stories is that God loves us, and even with our imperfections, God has a good use for us. That's the message that I hope our youth remember into adulthood.