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God Made the World
Scripture
Focus
God made the world beautiful and good and filled it with wonderful animals, fish, and birds.
Faith Nurture Goals
- Realize that God made all of the wonderful plants and creatures in our world.
- Name some favorite things God made.
- Praise God for our amazing world!
Leader Reflection
Preparing to Tell God's Story
Genesis 1 offers us such rich perspectives on creation that we can’t begin to cover them all in one unit. But we’ll tease out the strands that most powerfully inspire kids to celebrate the overwhelming majesty, splendor, and riches of God’s awesome creation. We especially want them to experience their world as a magnificent gift from their gloriously loving Creator. That will prod them
- to praise and give thanks for God’s wonders;
- to place their trust in God to care for them too;
- to enjoy this big, beautiful world;
- to take good care of it.
God created the heavens and the earth. The Hebrew word barah means “to make out of nothing.” Point out how amazing it is that God is able just to speak stuff into being. Point out also that God creates order out of the original “tohu wabohu,” Hebrew words that, taken together, mean something like “all mixed up together in one big terrifying mess” (see Gen. 1:2; the NIV’s “formless and empty” is much too gentle.) Like a potter who first takes a glob of goopy clay and then starts molding it, God shapes the fiercely disordered chaos into a cozy, ordered, life-sustaining habitat for us. In a firmly methodical way, God issues commands that separate out day and night, sky and earth, land and sea.
The ordering process is emphasized through a recurring rhythmic pattern. Each time God
- gives a command,
- sees what was commanded,
- makes a judgment about this new thing,
- names it,
- and blesses it.
Each of these patterns is put to bed with the same refrain: “There was evening and there was morning—the [first, second, third . . .] day.”
In your telling, allow the rhythms of the narrative (“Let there be…”; “And there was evening, and there was morning…”) to communicate to kids the sense of order and regularity that God gave to the creation. They can always trust our faithful God to give us a new day after the sun has set.
Wondering
Why does this chapter emphasize the ordering of the creation?
Why do you think God created the world by speaking things into being?
Teaching
Young children love repetition. Make the most of God’s repeated response to each created wonder: it was good, very good.
This session has a single, simple aim: to elicit wonder and praise from your group of preschoolers. Use every opportunity you have to point them to the amazing and beautiful plants and animals God has created for us to enjoy.
Steps
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DWELL helps kids find their place in God's Big Story. Learn more about this popular and trusted children’s ministry curriculum.