VBS - Tuesday - God Forgives

Tuesday night already! Our class time made it clear what the important theme was for the evening: forgiveness. We read Matthew 18:21-35 in which Jesus tells the story of the master who forgave a servant who was unable to pay a debt. But that same servant then went out and failed to forgive the debt of a fellow servant who owed him a much smaller amount, and in fact, treated him harshly. When the master heard the story, he was very upset with his servant that he had forgiven earlier. The story instructs us that as our Father in heaven forgives us our sins and trespasses, so too should we forgive those around us who do wrong. In the Lord's Prayer, we ask God to forgive us as we forgive others.

Forgiveness was emphasized in crafts, too, where we watched a demonstration that compared failing to offer forgiveness as a rock that we have to carry around with us. If we collect too many rocks, too many times that we fail to forgive somebody, we can get really weighed down. To symbolize this, we painted a rock to remind us that we can release this weight, give up this rock, by forgiveness.

In the skit, we watched several acts of forgiveness. Terry and Jerry forgave each other, repeatedly. And although it was hard for Bakari to understand, Dr. Doolots forgave Jerry for taking his ladder without permission. When each of them offered forgiveness, it stopped them being mad, and let them continue to be friends and work together.

When we played outside, we found out we could work together to get across a stretch of quicksand. We had two mats and we could place one in front of us, move to it, and then grab the one we had been on and move that one forward. It worked pretty well. We may remember this tomorrow when our safari friends in the skit face some quicksand.

We ate some yummy zebra bars which resembled brownies with white icing. We weren't able to feed the alligators, though, because there didn't seem to be any zebra bars left after the staff found them. So we had to be extra careful around the watering hole, or scooted around it to the table where we could add some messages to the maps of Africa that we will send to Liberia along with our donations in support of elementary school scholarships.So we all learned that God shows his love for us by his forgiveness. And we can show God's love to our friends by forgiving them. As we sang in "The Father Loves Me", our new song tonight:

                        I forgive you
                        'cause He forgives me, too,
                        And I want His
                        kingdom to come!