Updated 11 June 2018: Kids Club FX final event before Summer..
Fedora: My outfit is better than yours.
Beard: I don’t understand, my stylist said shaggy facial hair and tunics are all the rage now.
Fedora: This is a Fashion Crime. Give me your stylist’s number. There’s just no accounting for taste these days.
“SEZ WHO?” (pic from IslandECC Instagram)
*Sketch – NOT what really went down (you guys know Im just messing, right? 😀 )..
That is the story of Gideon in the book of Judges, told via a sketch of a private investigator looking into how he succeeded in leading the Israelites into a winning battle with insurmountable odds against the Midianites, in Judges 8. (The picture after that is of a Superhero Dance-off 😀 )
Insurmountable odds. Personally, I love this story – Gideon begins with an army of about 32,000 against 135,000 Midianites – odds of 4 to 1 against him. Like that’s not scary enough (this is not like in Nerf battles where you hit each other with rubber-tipped foam pellets) God then keeps whittling away at Gideon’s forces until just 300 remain, the rest being sent home, odds of 450:1.
(This is especially powerful for me – I once (ok, for over 10 years) dealt in investment products made from a wide range of derivatives (options, swaps, the whole gamut of stuff that can be put together from these basic building blocks to access credit, interest rate, forex as well as stocks) – odds, or probability, plays a very, very important role – the price of an investment, also the price to protect the client’s initial investment (with more of said building blocks) all comes from probability. Prices that the final investment product lives or dies by, prices that determine whether the combination of blocks even makes sense, are all made out of their odds, their probabilities, and how traders view them – if the trading public believes the market is likely to tank, protection against a plummeting market costs a lot. (In a bull market therefore, is when you should buy your protection against a plummeting market 🙂 because then it’s just super cheap…) )
As the “private investigator” interviewing “Gideon” finds out, Gideon’s army of 300 then proceeds to go to war…… not with swords, but with trumpets. And lamps in pitchers. That must’ve sounded so strange. Trumpets?
At the right time, the loud sounds of the 300 breaking pitchers and lamps and trumpeting and screaming their lungs out in the middle of the night so startles and confuses the sleeping enemy that the panicked Midianite soldiers turn on each other in the dark. Then, they flee…… and eventually run into the thousands of soldiers Gideon had sent home.
The powerful lesson is one of confidence, of faith in the Lord. He sees what we do not.
Ps:
Besides Gideon’s Insurmountable Odds, awhile ago the Grownup Service mentioned the story of David and Goliath, including British-born Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell’s Underdogs, Misfits and Battling Giants’ take on how the Goliath of the Bible was not the fearful opponent the Israelites believed him to be. He was possibly a “pituitary giant,” thereby lacking speed and agility, and David actually had a fair chance at defeating him based on the strategy he employed and Goliath’s potential conditions which would only be discovered scientifically much later….. Except all David had back then was his faith. Science caught up later. And that was so exciting!)
“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.”
In an informal, warm and friendly class ceremony last Sunday, Rockstar graduated from Kids Club to Youth, receiving a certificate of completion and Boys’ Bible to mark the occasion…
Au-natural, almost nobody’s ready pic 😀 (There were two, one at 9.30am and another 11.30am)
Can’t thank some of these kids and volunteers enough, 30 kids in the group, and currently 130 middle-to-high schoolers spread across 3 out of 4 of the regular Sunday services (somebody please correct me if that has changed!) we came here relatively anonymously and then more and more regularly for months, then years… One day Rockstar realised how much he looked forward to joining the group every Sunday – I think it was when we were really late and he didn’t want to wait for me to check him in before getting to class 😛
You might still see Rockstar wearing his orange Kids’ Club band about despite the “graduation” into Youth though, they officially start in September, and that band’s just the most recent one he’s had from church along with the ball in the pic on the right.. (the other pic is from several summers ago, when the kids’ floor was decorated animal/ jungle themed for another Bible Study series)
My favourite worship song lyric, “Today is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it”
“We have one rule: Honour One Another…” Youth Leaders giving the kids a brief run-through of Youth activities at the church with an emphasis on inclusion (below)
(Even as Rockstar gravitates toward the snacks bowl 😀 )
“…Is there any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?”
– C. S. Lewis*
No Fire Today, But Pizza!
For several months prior, we’ve just seen this one classroom when we pick our soon-to-be Youth up (or stand at the door gesticulating for them to meet us on the Kids’ floor when they’re done, then go down to stand outside the relevant kids’ class and patiently surf our phones as HN carefully avoids eye contact because she’s not ready to leave yet :D)… Oh yeah and about half the time Sophie The Hamster also comes with (I… bring the hamster with me to Grownup Service and then let HN have it after class to play with her friends. Yes, IslandECC, there is at least one hamster sitting on one of your 3 sermon floors during one of your service times :P)
Anyway. Today we got to walk around the entire Youth floor; other Youth would explain they mostly hang out here on weekends between services/ activities… (There is a separate Kids floor, and about half of another floor is a Babies/Toddlers floor)
Ready?
Yes under the “graffiti” words are Bible pages on that canvas
(Missed taking a pic of the 2-3 other classrooms to one side though)
No Fireplace Today, But XBox!
I. Know. I wanna be Youth! (Sadly, missed by like, 3 decades :P)
(And the skateboard makes this art :D)
Ends.
Epilogue:
(Grade 5 = ESF Year 6)
Haha “Grossology” – Boys Bible indeed!
And down on the Kids’ floor HN got this for her birthday too, from volunteering Youth. Origami dragon. Havent seen this particular one before, you guys seen this one? Really complicated folding 🙂
*C.S. Lewis: What I owe [to the Inklings] is incalculable…
In the 1930s and 40s Oxford University boasted some of the greatest Christian minds and an all-male informal group who got together simply to discuss unfinished literary works, with no rules or agenda, known as the Beatles Inklings.
The young men amused themselves with activities like Who Can Read Bad Prose The Longest Without Laughing (Try Not To Laugh Challenge, anyone?), and out of the 2 decades of fortnightly meetings were born such works as Lord of the Rings, and Chronicles of Narnia…
(Narnia pics from hotspot.com and syfy.com)
