Monday, June 8, 2009

Spiritual lessons from Optimus Prime

The kids are loving our new church. The children's church program is fantastic, awarding the kids tokens each week for a) being present, b) bringing their Bible, and c) memorizing a weekly Bible verse. (Every so often they are able to "shop" with their tokens.)

The boys are doing a great job with their memory verses, and they ask frequently to practice them. This week's verse is the first portion of Romans 12:2: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind . . ."

I've started doing a short Bible lesson with them before bed some evenings, so tonight when they wanted to recite their verse I decided to use that verse for a Bible lesson. In an attempt to illustrate what "conformed" means, we used some containers in the kitchen to show how a substance conforms to the shape of a container and talked about how that can happen to people when we try to be like those around us. Then we got to the second part of the verse, and I asked them if they knew what "transform" meant.

What was I thinking? Of course they know what transform means. "It means a robot turns into a car!" Well, yes, Ethan, let's go with that. They totally got what transforming meant thanks to Mattel or whoever makes Transformers. It was an understandable illustration of how our hearts look ugly and selfish before Christ transforms them to look like His love.

Which would be a bigger miracle, I asked, to change a helicopter into a robot or to change a person's heart? They agreed Optimus Prime's got nothing on the Son of God.

No comments: