Courage
“For the Spirit God gave us did not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” – 2 Timothy 1:7
The first Bible story that came to mind when thinking about courage was the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego found in Daniel chapters 1-3. The story is about three men who stand up to King Nebuchadnezzar when he says that people are not allowed to worship God. They must worship him only. These three guys refuse to give up worship of the one, true God and are thrown into the furnace. When the king looks into the furnace, he sees the three men walking around with one other figure. Some believe the fourth figure was Michael the Archangel. Others believe it was Jesus. The point, however, is that through the courage and faith of these men, and the power and deliverance of God Almighty, these men survived and King Nebuchadnezzar publicly acknowledged Yahweh as the one true God. You can find a kids version of the story here. We actually watched a fun little YouTube video that I recommend.
Today, I made up a Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego craft. You remember doing a diorama as a kid? I thought we’d do our own version. I was inspired by Mom on Timeout and her earth day project with tissue paper. She always has great stuff, and I really think her creativity spurned on my own.
The first thing we did was to cut out two pieces of wax paper the size our our shoe box. I also cut out four little figures on black stock paper. Meanwhile, the girls ripped up red, orange and cream colored tissue paper that would become our fire.
The next thing we did was spread some glue all over the wax paper. Then we stuck down our figures and put the tissue paper (red on bottom, orange on the next level and cream toward the top) on top of that. We then covered the entire thing by the other wax paper.
Then, cut a rectangle hole in the bottom of the box, stick glue down and blue your wax paper to the box. When it dries, we added flame-less tea lights to the inside box to give a really cool effect. They flicker, so it really looks like a fire inside. I was so excited about the outcome.
This is great activity, I can’t wait to do it with my little ones! Just dropping by from Saturday Show & Tell.
Thanks for stopping by, Abby. I’d love to see pictures if you do it.
Totally Perfect!!! I’d love to have you share at my party…it JUST opened!!!
http://www.itsoverflowing.com/2012/04/overflowing-with-creativity-19.html
XO, Aimee
I have been so busy this week and have a hard time linking up in my normal spots this week. Maybe next week would be better. Thanks so much!
Great post! I love the way that you illustrated this Bible story. I can see my sons having fun doing this project, but also gaining a better understanding of God at work. Can’t wait for you to share with us this week!
Mackenzie
http://www.cheeriosandlattes.com
You’ve been featured on Saturday Show & Tell this week! Thanks again for sharing!
Mackenzie
Thank you so much, MacKenzie. I just tried a couple times to add your featured button, but I couldn’t get it to work. Would you want to send it to my email? jodi@meaningfulmama.com or just click through from my site. I tried to copy and paste from your site, and it just wasn’t working. Sorry. Thank you so much for featuring this. The character development stuff is at the heart of what my blog is all about, so it’s great to get that stuff more exposure. Thanks! I also was super excited about the results of this one.
We are doing this in our nursery class Sunday at church, except I’m having them sandwich the pieces between 2 sheets of clear contact paper. I can’t wait to see them doing this project…I think it will really help the story come alive for them!
This makes me really happy. We absolutely loved doing this. Please let me know how it goes!! Just glanced at your blog. Way to set your priorities in line. Blessings!
Wonderful! We just played with tissue paper last week, and we actually just memorized that verse the week before (for he letter F)! But this will be fun to do when we get to this Bible story! Thanks!