On Tuesday’s lesson we were talking about the creation of animals. One of the points we were stressing was that man doesn’t possess the ability to give life to anything. Even if we carve an animal from wood or paint a realistic picture or take a picture we can’t infuse life into that carving or image. Life isn’t ours to give. God is the only one who can give life. To illustrate that we had set a large container upside down in the middle of where the crowd sits. Then we had set on it a bunch of picture books that show different animals, fish and birds from around the world. One was a book on the snakes of Southern Africa.
During the teaching I went to the pile and started showing them pictures from the books. “Here is a picture of a snake. Can I give this picture life? No, I can’t. Can you? No, you can’t. Are you afraid of this snake? No, your not. Why not? That’s right, because it is only a picture made by humans. Are you afraid of the real snakes? Yes, you are. Why? That’s right, because it is real and has life. So you are not afraid of any of these images of animals made by humans? No? Are you sure? You mean you are really not afraid of any of these things made by man? Ok, if you insist.” At that point I stood up to return to the front where I normally teach from. As I did so I picked up the container. What they didn’t know was that before anyone else had shown up at the teaching site we had put one Elias’ real-looking fake snakes under the container. As I stood up and removed the book container from the middle of the crowd the fake snake was uncovered!
You can’t believe how fast the people scattered! When they realized it was fake they all started to laugh and laugh. At least most of them. One or two of the older ladies and a few of the young kids needed quite a bit of convincing that it was safe to return and sit down. So much for not being afraid of things made by people! It took about 10 minutes for everyone to sit down and another 10 minutes to get everyone’s attention back so I could finish the point of my illustration. And what was that? Even if we humans can make things that are REALLY realistic, realistic enough to scare you into running away, we still can’t give them life. Only God can do that.
After the meeting the fake snake was a big hit, as were the books that show all of God’s amazing variety in creation. Needless to say the story of the fake snake was retold all around the village that afternoon and evening. Elin heard one of the ladies telling about it and saying: “They did that to show us that even things that look real, if humans made them, they don’t have real life. Only God is big enough to give real life to things.”
Please pray that the things we teach, and the way we teach them, will increase His honor amongst those that hear.