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| The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through.... |
The Kingdom Parables
In the Atrium we present the parables Jesus gave us to describe the kingdom of heaven. One of those is the simple illustration given in Matthew 13: 33. After a very short reading from Scripture we mix 3 T flour, 1/4 t.
quick rise yeast and 2 T warm water in one bowl and in another bowl mix just the flour and water. If you set these aside for 30 - 45 minutes the children will be able to see a difference in the two.
You could spend time discussing with the children important points like:
- the kingdom Jesus talked about was very different from any other kingdom
- when you mix the flour and yeast together you can't separate them
- something so small (the yeast) can make a huge difference in the dough
.... or you could just launch right in, which is what we did!
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| I used clear glass bowls so that each child could have his or her own and so that we could see the air pockets more easily later. |
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| Not for eating! But feel free to smell :) |
The children can practice patience and some self control, resisting the urge to keep stirring or touching the dough until the time is up. Once it's time to investigate your dough again, you can always call the students back together to talk about what happened. I intend to re-present this work the next time we meet or after we've discussed some of the other parables. It slowly becomes clear that something small can become big!
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| Wowza! |
There are some good resources on this work, including:
