Play Dough!

Oh, this was fun. We were looking at miracles, specifically Christ's ability to heal people from physical and spiritual disabilities (re. Mark 2 and 3). I divided the class into pairs, gave each pair a blob of play dough and instructed one person in each pair to make one of the following: a blind man; a lame man; a leper and a man with a withered hand. Amusing results depicted below. I then asked the other person to 'cure' each affliction, which they found quite easy.

The leper...made whole

The blind....could see

The lame...walked 

The man with the withered(?) hand...sat down to recuperate?

The question was posed, what would be even better than being healed of a physical ailment and the answer came, being healed of a spiritual affliction. I then brought out my 4 perfect little play dough people. I picked up the first and told the students that this person was dealing with an addiction to pornography. I handed it to a student and asked them if they could fix it. They somberly shook their head. The next character was struggling to forgive someone for a wrong they had suffered. Again, can you see it, can you fix it? The third was weighed down with guilt and feeling unworthy. You see where I'm going with this...

My 'perfect' people, wighed down by sin and grief

 
The class got the message that just as some people suffer afflictions that may be obvious, many are struggling with things we can't see. This led into a discussion and a consideration of whether we have faith that Christ has the power to heal our ills and forgive our sins.

A successful lesson, I thought, with the only downside being a drop in quality of the second topic covered due to the continued interst in play dough.