Bible 7: Ropes and Relationships

In Bible 7, we finished our unit on Abraham with one final story from Genesis 44. We recalled the broken relationship between Jacob and Esau and between Joseph and his brothers. We read and discussed how God restored these relationships for His glory. 

We started the lesson with an opening question. Have you ever done something where you get angry at yourself for doing something (or not doing something)? What is it and why do you get angry at yourself for it? Answers were forgetting silly things like our homework at school, favorite book, etc. We transitioned to a movie clip from October Sky where 4 high school boys are attempting to successfully launch a model rocket. In the clip, they are unsuccessful in their attempts yet are getting closer and learning from their failures. We discussed the clip then reviewed Joseph's life up to this point before diving into reading Genesis 44 orally. After reading, I hand out questions for students to answer together based off the passage. When they finish, we go over their responses and discuss the events of the story. 

This lesson has a "magic" trick that relates to what we were talking about; how relationships can break and how God can restore those relationships. I shared a video of the "magic" rope trick and explained how a relationship is strong and whole like the rope at the beginning. As the rope is folded in half, there are at least two parties in a relationship and we often tear or break apart those relationships as the rope is cut 'in half.' A knot is tied together from two ends of the rope signifying how God sees and understands that we do not. We can invite him into our broken relationships to restore them. The knot on the rope is then removed and the rope is in one piece again! We reviewed how we saw this in Jacob and Esau's relationship, Joseph and his brothers, Peter and Christ and one student brought up how God restored our relationship with Him through Christ's sacrifice and death on the cross! He defeated death by his resurrection! 

To end our time together, I had several pieces of rope for students to try out the "magic" trick for themselves. We watched a YouTube video which explained how to do the trick and 13 out of my 14 students were successful! I have posted pictures below of students working with their pieces of rope. I have posted the video beneath the pictures in case you are interested and want to try the "magic" rope trick out for yourself! Enjoy!