Sunday School — Bartimaeus

I'm teaching 2nd grade Sunday school now.

Until promotion Sunday at the beginning of September the 1st and 2nd graders were combined. I started teaching in the month of August. The week before promotion Sunday I had 14 kids, and a set of twins wasn't there, so I'm happy they found a teacher so the class could be split.

I thought I'd occasionally share some of the lessons I'm doing with the kids. Maybe they'll be helpful for someone else or just for teaching a fun Bible lesson to your own kids.

A couple of weeks ago we studied Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46-52. Bar means 'son of' and he was the son of Timaeus. He was a blind man that was begging on the side of the road by Jericho.

When Bartimaeus heard Jesus was coming, he yelled for Him to hear since there was always a crowd around Jesus. People tried to shush him, but he just yelled louder. Jesus called Bartimaeus over and He healed him. That's the story in a nutshell.

We started out the class by sitting in the floor instead of in our chairs. We held out our hands like Bartimaeus would have done as if begging by the side of the road. We talked about how it would have been to have been blind and not able to work in those days to support yourself.

I took a little white drawstring bag of stuff to class. Here it is dumped out on my carpet.

I went around the circle and had the kids pick something and tell me what they thought it was before they took it out. Most of them couldn't. Even when they were able to pick something, like the card, I asked them what kind, so they could tell how important their sight would be for the details.

Then we yelled like Bartimaeus. We yelled, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Yes, we really yelled, and then we shushed, and then we yelled louder. Because I wanted them to get it and remember it.

We are very lucky we have a door to close.