January 28 – “Nicknames and dialects”

We had a pretty good day at church yesterday for the start of the study on the Gospel of John.  Highest attendance since Christmas Eve, and several of our regular families were out of town or had to work.  I had a lot of fun with the children’s sermon.  I held up several items from different countries and the kids were to guess where they might be from.  Of course the adults all threw in guesses of their own, but we are all just big kids, aren’t we?  I had a khafia from Israel.  They got a kick out of that one, because I wore it during the whole kids’ time.  Next was one of those nesting doll things from Russia.  They got that one right away.  Someone even used the word “babushka.”  Then came a jar of “essence of perfume” that I bought for Chris in Egypt back when I went on a Holy Land study trip in college.  I was surprised that it took a while for them to get that one.  It had a painting of an Egyptian woman on the bottle, but maybe they couldn’t see it very well.  The last thing was a Christian symbol I got in the catacombs of Rome on that trip.  No one had any idea about that one.  The idea I was trying to get across was that it would be a whole lot easier to figure out who God is if we could meet him and see what he is wearing and what he sounds like.  Hence … Jesus.  We also did a little bit on nicknames, since Jesus is called the Word in the first chapter of John.  One of the kids told me his nickname was Worm.  Kind of fits him, too.  He is one of those wiggly, squiggly little guys that you just gotta love. 

The intro to the regular sermon was fun, too.  On a powerpoint slide I put some texting lingo and then some phonetically spelled Texas dialect to see if they could figure it out.  They did fine with the easy ones, LOL (laughing out loud) and ROFL (rolling on floor laughing).  Didn’t get CD9, though (Code 9: Parents Nearby).  We were all laughing at the Texas dialect words, though.  Stuff like moanin (between sunrise and noon), rench (what you do to the dishes after you warsh em), and my favorite, war (metal strands attached to posts to enclose animals, as in “Don’t git stuck on the bob war”).  It all worked well as an introduction to the secret lingo of the Gnostics that John took on and redefined by giving Jesus the gnostic nickname, The Word.  Now I have to sit down and develop a series plans for the rest of the book.  Should be a lot of fun.  Pretty intense, too.  I’m excited about it, anyway.  Guess that counts for something.

John 1:1-5 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”

Father, thank you for the times when adults forget and regain the wonder of learning like children.  Amen.