Tears at Family Sunday School

The first Sunday of the month, our church holds "family Sunday school"; kids do not report to their individual classrooms but gather instead as one large group in the basement fellowship hall to sing, study a Bible lesson, and do a related craft project with their parents (as you may recall). Yes, decades after "graduating" from Sunday school ourselves, Susan and I find ourselves now back in it as our children's classmates. Actually, it's kinda fun to read Bible stories with them and do the related crafts together and then spend the following week doing the nightly readings, prayers, and activities suggested in the handouts from family Sunday school.

So, why the tears at Sunday school, you ask? They were tears of laughter--fits of uncontrollable laughter, as a matter of fact, intensified by the fact that we couldn't explain to our daughters the cause of the laughter--and by the fact that laughing was totally inappropriate in that time and place (which, of course, always just makes it worse). Before the day's activity (making an advent calendar), we were to read some Bible verses and answer together a few questions about them. Susan volunteered to read aloud the verses: I Kings 11:1-3.

Did you click the link? Go ahead, do it; I'll wait. (You need to have read it in order to "get" the rest of this post.)

Susan read it and immediately looked at me with a facial expression that clearly said what I, too, was thinking: "Of all the verses in the Bible to use with children, why choose one that tells about Solomon's having sex with a thousand women?!" We were overtaken with laughter, and the girls, looking on, started giggling, too, albeit cluelessly. They inadvertently heightened their parents' laughter by innocently asking, "What's a concubine?" Susan said, "A girlfriend," and we were off into more fits of laughter. We were so focused on the polygamy and adultery--and the number of women whom Solomon could entertain--that it was difficult to think clearly about what value these isolated verses might have for a Sunday school discussion. We moved quickly on to the craft portion of the day.

(Wanna add to the fun? Check out the verbs chosen in this translation. Now imagine little kids asking you to explain it.)

After church, we treated ourselves to dinner out at Arby's, where we saw and visited with Susan's aunt and uncle Patty and Buddy. Then we went to a local going-out-of-business everything's-a-dollar-or-thereabouts store so that I could buy gifts for a coworker. I'm his Secret Santa, and I want to give him a little something each day until we have "the reveal" (of who has been each person's Secret Santa), so we found numerous funny and inexpensive gifts for me to give him. For Day 1 of our Secret Santa span of time, I want him to come to work tomorrow to find his office decorated for Christmas, so Susan and the girls came with me to the office this afternoon to help me string up garland and bows and stockings and ornaments above his desk and in the window of his office door. I'm looking forward to finding ways to sneak into his office each day to leave his daily Secret Santa gifts!