May 24 – “Food fights and friends”

 

 

I did the teaching at the youth group meeting again last night.  They really had fun with the intro activity.  I taped the name of a classic book on each of their backs.  They had to figure out what their book was by asking yes or no questions.  They ended up doing it one at a time, with the questioner in the "hot seat" in front of everyone.  It was a good thing that they were all high schoolers.  I don't know many junior high kids who have read Wuthering Heights or War and Peace.  That one may find its way back into some teaching in the future.  Maybe camp?  The study itself was on the Bible and what made it stand out in a way that made it more significant than the books they guessed.  Worked out pretty well. 

 

The meeting then morphed into a surprise birthday party for one of the girls.  Her Mom had set up a scavenger / clue hunt for her.  Each clue was somewhere in a Bible verse, which then led to the location of the next verse.  The final verse led her to one of the showers, where her Mom had put a birthday cake.  It took so long for her to figure all the clues, though, that by the time she found the cake, all the candles had burned to the nub and the icing was turning into hot fudge.  Didn't affect the taste.  And it certainly didn't affect the food fight that occurred when someone "helped" the birthday girl get up close and personal with her piece of cake.  If you just looked at her and hadn't seen what occurred, you would think at first that she had a black eye.  Then, as the frolicking peaked and began to wind down, it appeared that she had been on a raucous romp in a mud puddle.  Great fun.  Memories of an eighteenth birthday that I hope she won't soon forget.

 

1 John 4:1-3 says, "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world."

 

Father, thank you for food fights and friends.  Amen.