Permanent Markers: A Hands-on Family Devotional of Spiritual Life SkillsSample

Community: Almost Home

Play:

1. Cut a plastic straw into 1” pieces.

2. Push a piece of dental floss (six feet or more) through the straw, like beads.

3. Gather mini-figures or other small toys, and tape one of them to each piece of straw.

4. Tie one end of the floss to the back of a chair. Set unused mini-figures on its seat. Hold the other end of the floss high … for your own zipline!

5. Help mini-figures on the straws fall to be near the other mini-figures.*

Talk it out:

It’s not usually good when you find a mini-figure on its own in your house. It could get lost. You can’t play with it. It could stab your parents’ feet. (Ow.)

But this is way more true with people. Even when Adam was in the Garden of Eden with God, God said it wasn’t good Adam was alone.

In fact, the Bible says Christians need each other so much, it’s like they’re one big body, with Jesus as the head. Just like your body, we have to work together or things go really wrong.

Can anyone show us what your body parts might look like if they weren’t working together?

It’s not pretty.

But some of the ways we live keep us from community—from really connecting with people. Maybe we’re too busy to really talk or hang out or have people over. Time on screens or social media might make us feel connected, but we don’t usually talk about things that really matter. (And Jesus showed up with his physical body! See John 1:14).

All of us need “safe place” people. Not just where your body is safe, but who you could tell anything, even something scary or secret. You know they’d believe you, care about you, and take care of you.

Who’s one person who’s a safe place for you?

We also want to be safe places for people.

We want to be people others can talk to and know they won’t be laughed at, ignored, hurried by, or preached at.

We always tell people the truth, like Jesus did. Yet we accept them and help them. Just like He does (Romans 15:7).

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*Activity revised from Rachel Miller, Holly Homer, & Jamie Harrington, The 101 Coolest Simple Science Experiments: Awesome Things to Do with Your Parents, Babysitters, and Other Adults. Salem, Massachusetts: Page Street Publishing Company (2016).