Abraham: Get With the Plan!

Here is my lesson for this coming Monday, October 29, 2012. The session focuses on Abraham!

BIG IDEA: God is setting things right and we need to “get with the plan.” Abraham shows us how.

Preliminaries (15 mins)

• welcome and introductions
• kids write their prayer intentions
• opening procession to set up prayer center
• opening prayer

Engage (10 mins)

• Bring in a “home plate” (from baseball…I have a rubber one) to show the young people and ask them to identify what it is.
• Ask what the goal is in baseball: to get “home.”
• Talk about why baseball chose to use the image of a home to represent its ultimate goal: home is where we want to be; where we belong; where we are safe; where we are with those we love, etc.
• Explain that in baseball, getting home is not easy…sometimes we get called out/picked off because we made a bad decision or weren’t paying attention.
• Ask the young people what we learned from Genesis about our true home: paradise, the garden of Eden, walking with God.
• Like poor baserunners, we humans took our eyes off of home and allowed sin to enter the world.
• God has a plan to bring us home…we need to get with the plan!
• Abraham shows us how its done (he puts on a “clinic!”).

Explore (30 mins)

• Arrange young people in pairs, provide them with Bibles, and assign them one of the following stories (using this worksheet) to read and report on:
  • Gn 12:1-8 (God’s call and migration)
  • Gn 13:1-18 (God’s promise of land/a home)
  • Gn 15:1-18 (God makes a covenant with Abram)
  • Gn 17:1-9, 15-22 (God changes Abram’s and Sarai’s names)
  • Gn 18:1-15 (3 visitors and the promise of a son)
  • Gn 22: 1-18 (God tests Abraham’s faith)
• Here’s the answer key to the above worksheet.
• Invite volunteers to try telling the “whole” story of Abraham! (they can use notes) “Once upon a time…”
• If time permits, have young people complete part 2 of the above worksheet which identifies qualities that Abraham exemplifies in these stories and invites them to identify how he practiced these and how they can practice them in their lives.
  • Listening
  • Courage
  • Obedience
  • Letting Go
  • Trust
  • Commitment

Reflect (15 mins)

• Tell the young people that we have a very special person who helps us to “get with the plan” – Jesus’ mother Mary, and that we honor her this month during the month of the Holy Rosary.
• Invite young people to move to their “sacred space” with their Rosaries and invite them to pray the second part of each Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be.
• Pray as many decades as time allows.

Respond (5 mins)

• Send young people forth with the challenge to “get with God’s plan” by “making things right” with someone in imitation of how God is making things right with us.

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