God Knows Best

Can you count to ten?  Let's count together.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.  Good!  Now let's see who knows how to count in Spanish. Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho nueve, diez.  It's fun to learn another language.  The words sound funny to us at first until we learn what they mean.  Uno means one, dos means two, and tres means three.  Uno, dos, tres.  See?  Why don't we all speak the same language?  The Bible explains what happened a long time ago.  People used to speak all the same language. They all had the same words. They all had the same words for counting.  They all said mommy and daddy the same way.  They could understand each other no matter what they said.  They found a big place, a place big and wide with enough room for everybody and decided to make a city there. They made plans together and nobody fought about it.  They all wanted to do the same thing.  They decided to make bricks out of clay and build a big tower. They said, "We can make a tower that reaches up to the sky! Then we will be famous. Everyone will think we are the best. If we all stick together we can do amazing things!" That is what they said.  Does that sound like a good plan?  Well, let's think about it.  If you make a tower with blocks and your dad says - "Good job, Jacob," or "That's good Ella," then you feel good about yourself, don't you?  But what if you and your friends could make a tower as big as your house?  You might think you could do everything yourself. You might think that you were so smart, and so strong and so good at making towers that you don't need anyone else.  You could make big buildings, and be on TV and be the boss of everybody, and everyone would think that you were the best.  But really God is the best. So God saw what the people were doing, and thought, "If they stay together and make big towers, they will forget me.  They are finding a way to get right up into heaven without me. So, God wanted to mess up their plans a little, so they would need him and not just do everything without him. God is really smart.  And he has a lot of power. So he gave the command - he said it and it happened - that different people would speak different languages.  The people started talking to each other and now some of them spoke English, some Spanish, some French, some Italian, and some Chinese. They couldn't understand what the other people were saying!  So they stopped building their city, and started going in different directions.  People that could understand each other stayed together and made their own place, and other people lived somewhere else.  God knows what's best for us.  Sometimes we have ideas that are not good for us. We might think, I'm going to be a great fireman someday.  But God knows you are not very careful and you might get burned. If God wants you to be a teacher, then he will turn your head that way and show you what to do. He might make you really love the alphabet, so that you would want to teach other people the alphabet.  We need to pay attention to God's plans for us and not get carried away with our own ideas.  God knows what's best for us.

Starting Over

It's an amazing thing to be alive.  You can see with your eyes.  You can hear with your ears.  What else?  You can smell with your nose!  And your fingers can touch.  Our bodies are wonderful, and God made us that way because he loves us. We can do wonderful things, to help people and to say nice things.  With our hands we can touch someone gently to show them we love them.  We can smile at people and make new friends.  When our heart is connected to God, we are thankful, and we can love other people. But what would happen if we forgot about God, and just wanted our own way?  What if nobody obeyed their mommies and daddies?  If we were all really bad, we wouldn't let anyone else play with our toys, and we would try to take things away from other people. We wouldn't want to live in a place like that, if people acted that way.  And it would make God sad, too.  Here's what happened. After Adam and Eve left the garden, they had many children.  And their children grew up and had children, and got married and had more children until there were lots of people living on the earth. Did they want to share and be gentle and kind?  No, the people started to be bad all the time. Even after they got a spanking they just wanted to do the same thing again.  When God looked in their hearts all he could see were bad ideas about how to be mean and hurt their friends.  God was sorry that he had made people.  He only found one man who was still listening to him and wanted to obey.  His name was Noah.  God told Noah what he was going to do. He was going start over.  There was going to be a flood of water that would cover the earth and end the life of everyone on the earth.  The water would get so high that it would destroy everything.  He wanted to save Noah and his family and the animals, so he told Noah to build a giant boat, called an ark.  He told Noah to make it out of gopher wood and cover it with tar, which is kind of like plastic, so that it wouldn't leak.  Noah and his family made the boat just like God told them to.  When it was ready God told Noah to get into the boat with his wife and his three sons, and their wives, eight people altogether.  Noah took animals into the ark with him, too.  Birds, sheep, horses, goats, pigs, you name it, he took it on the boat.  He took a male and a female, a mommy and a daddy.  Other animals followed Noah into the ark, too.  Two of every kind of animal went into the ark. Every kind of cow, every kind of creeping animal like lizards, frogs, and turtles, and every kind of bird.  Then it started to rain.  It rained for forty days and forty nights.  That is a long time t rain.  Can you count to forty? Let's rain down with our fingers and count the days. (to 40) The fountains that were under the land came up, too, and water covered the whole earth.  But Noah and his family were safe because the ark floated on top of the water.  The water got higher and higher until finally even the mountains were covered up.  The people and the animals that were in the ark stayed alive, but everything else died because there was so much water.  The ark came to a stop on top of a mountain.  It stopped raining. Noah opened the window and sent out a bird to see if there was a place to land, but the bird came back to him.  There He waited another week and tried it again, but the bird came back again. The water finally went down and down, like it does in the bathtub.  It keeps going down until the bathtub is dry. At last, he sent out a bird again, and when it didn't come back he knew the ground was dry.  God spoke to Noah and told him it was time to get out of the ark. All the animals got out, too, so that they could spread out and have babies again all over the earth.  Noah and his family came out and worshiped God.  God was glad. God loves people, and when the flood was over he said he would never do that again, no matter how bad people got.  God put a rainbow up in the sky to remind us that he loves us.  When you see a rainbow after it rains, you can remember how much God loves you.         

A Bad Choice

In the beginning, when God made the world, he made the first mommy and daddy, Adam and Eve.  He made a garden to be their home.  God told them to be the boss of all the animals.  Can you imagine telling the lions it was time to go to sleep now?  Or telling the rabbits to come close so you could pet them?  God told them to take care of the plants in the garden, too.  There was fruit growing on the trees, and Adam and Eve could eat whatever they wanted, except for one tree in the middle of the garden.  That tree was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told them if they ate from that tree, they would die. God didn't want us to die, so he warned us.  Every day when it was cool, God came and walked in the garden with Adam and Eve and talked with them.  Adam and Eve didn't have a mom and dad, but God was a father to them.  Their hearts were connected to God's heart.  But there was a very sneaky animal in the garden who did not love Adam and Eve.  Or God.  It was a snake.  One day the snake made trouble come to the garden.  He said to Eve, "Did God really say not to eat from every tree in the garden?"  Eve answered,"God said you shall not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, because you will die."  The snake said to Eve, "You will not die."  He said that God was telling a lie.  Do you think that God would lie?  No, God is good, and He tells us the truth.  But the snake said, "God doesn't want you to eat that fruit because if you eat it you will be smart like God, and you will be able to make your own choices about what is good and what is bad."  He was telling Eve that God wasn't a good Father, and that she should disobey him.  Oh no, now Eve was going to make her own choice.  Should she obey God?  Or would she obey the snake?  If the snake was right, then she wasn't going to die, she was going to be smart!  She decided to stop letting God be the boss of her.  She took some of the fruit and gave some to her husband, too.  When they had eaten the fruit, their hearts were no longer connected to God.  They knew there was something wrong with them, and they were sad and afraid.  They looked at each other and wanted to hide.  So they made clothes out of leaves to cover themselves up.  Then they heard God coming, so they hid behind some trees.  God called out, "Adam, where are you?"  Adam answered God and told him he was afraid, because he wasn't dressed, and that he was hiding.  God said, "Is there something wrong with you now?  Did you disobey me and eat from that tree?"  Adam pointed his finger at Eve and said "The woman that you gave me, Eve, - she gave me fruit from that tree."  Adam was telling on her!  So God asked Eve what she had done, and she told on the snake!  She said, "The snake lied to me, and so I ate."  God was upset with the snake, and he told the snake that from now on he would have to crawl on his belly and eat dust.  He said because the snake had been bad that from now on people and snakes would be enemies.  He also said that the woman was wrong. From now on her husband was going to be the boss over her, and now she was going to have extra pain when she had babies.  When we do something wrong, there is a punishment, isn't there?  Sometimes we get a spanking, sometimes there is a time out.  There was a consequence for Adam, too.  God would have to send them out of the garden.  From now on, the man would have to work very hard and it wouldn't be easy.  Because the man had disobeyed God, the ground was going to grow weeds and stickers, and the man would get really sweaty.  And the worst thing of all was that death now had come into the world. Before they ate from that tree, the man and the woman were never sick and they wouldn't die.  But now, because they disobeyed, the man and the woman were going to die at the end of their lives instead of staying with God.  This is a sad story.  We want to obey and be connected to God.  God wants to be close to us, too.  If you have disobeyed God, or your mom and dad, tell them you are sorry and ask them to forgive you.      

God Made People

In the beginning when God made the world, He made the land and the sky, the sun and the moon, plants and animals, and the last thing he made was a man.  The Bible says that He made man like you would make somethng out of playdough.  God took clay out of the ground to make a man.  God pushed it and rolled it and formed it into just the right shape.  He made man to look like God.  God has a face, so he made the man have a face, too.  What is on your face?   Eyes.  God wanted the man to see, so he made eyes.  What else?  God wanted him to hear, so he made the man with ears.  God can smell things, too, so he gave us a nose.  And God wants us to talk to him, so he gave us a mouth.  God feels, too.  He gets angry, and sorry, and so he gave the man a heart, too.  He formed him with arms and hands, legs and feet and toes, and he made his whole body out of clay.  He wanted the man to be alive. So He breathed into the man, so that he came to life.  That was the very first man and God named him Adam. God put him in a garden with rivers and trees and lots of good things to eat. Then God said, it's not good for the man to be alone.  There were animals in the garden, too.  God brought the animals to Adam to see what he would call them.  So Adam gave names to all the animals.  When he saw an animal that could swing in the trees, and eat bananas and make a laughing sound, Adam called that a ______.  A monkey, yes!  When Adam saw an animal with a long neck that ate the leaves up in the tops of the trees and had long legs he called that a ________. Giraffe! Then there was a huge animal with a trunk for a nose and big floppy ears.  Adam called that an _________. Elephant.  Do you know what he named a little furry creature that wiggles its nose like this?  With long ears?  And hops around?  A rabbit.  How about the one that lives in a shell, and sticks out its head and feet and goes really slow.  That's right, a turtle.  The man named all the animals, but even with all those animals there wasn't anyone there who was like him.  God knew the man needed a helper that he could talk to, someone who could understand him.  So the Lord God made the man go to into a deep sleep.  He made Adam sleep so good that he didn't even feel it when God reached in and took one of his ribs out.  Can you feel those long bones that grow above your tummy?  God took one out of Adam.  He closed up the skin so that it wouldn't bleed.  And God took the rib and made it grow bigger and made a beautiful shape.  He made it into a woman, a mommy.  And he brought her to the man.  When the man saw her, he said this one is for me.  Her bones are my bones, and her body is from my body.  I will call her a woman, because she was made from me.  God made a man and a woman to join together and become like one person.  That way when they grow up they can leave their mommy and daddy and they won't be alone because they will have each other.  The man and the woman can be together and share their food.  They can give each other a hug and keep each other warm when it gets cold.  God loves us very much and He knows what we need.  He made mommies and daddies, and he made you, too.