Saturday, January 26, 2013

Sunday School Lesson: "What more could I have done for my vineyard?"

Last week in Sunday School, we spent the entire time talking about two things, as a follow-up of the previous week's lesson on Jacob 5 and Moses 7:

1) How God could ask, "What more could I have done for my vineyard?" - as a sincere question, if he could have done anything he wanted to do;

2) Why God wept in Moses 7, and what that says about God and the condition of godhood.

We talked about the caricature of Eternal Life in the idea of endless rest and peace, with no conflict or turmoil, in light of Jacob 5 and Moses 7.

We read the verses with the most vivid imagery ("What more could I have done for my vineyard?" - "the devil looked up and laughed" - "Enoch knew, and looked upon their wickedness, and their misery, and wept and stretched forth his arms, and his heart swelled wide as eternity; and his bowels yearned; and all eternity shook."), and I made them pause to try to picture those scenes and imagine the details and the emotions and expressions they convey. We talked about God getting down and dirty in the mud and the muck - pruning, digging, dunging, weeping, waiting, enduring out of love - being the type of Being who could handle that sort of heartbreaking work willingly.

I told them that it is a hard concept to wrap one's heart and mind around, but it is the heart of why we use the title, "God, the Father". I ended by telling them that they will never be fully Christ-like and godly until they can accept serving others, who often don't appear to deserve it, in ways that leave them heart-broken and weeping - and still continue to endure to the end, even, perhaps, if there is no end.

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