Bible lessons for persons with cognitive disabilities
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Psalms 33 "the earth is full of God's lovingkindness" (© Jeff McNair)
Psalms 33 covers a lot of ground, however, as with all the Psalms we have been covering, I just pull out the parts that strike me as relevant to our group and focus on those aspects of the passage. In thinking through this passage, the verses that struck me were...
Verse 1 "Praise is becoming to the upright"
Verse 4 "The word of the Lord is upright. All his work is done in faithfulness.
Verse 5 "He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord"
Verse13 "He sees all the sons of men..."
Verse 15 "He understands all their works..."
Verse 22 "Let your lovingkindness, O lord be upon us, according as we have hoped in you"
Begin by talking about verse 1. It is becoming, or Christians should praise God. "What should we praise God for?" You will get many answers, but tell them, "Hold on a minute, I want to tell you something you might praise God for, one thing about God you might praise him for. Verse 4 says that the Lord is faithful. What does that mean?" I got good answers, mostly about that you can count on God. That God will do all that he says he will do. "Well God has told me a lot of things that he is going to do for me and for the world, and for people. It seems that if God did little other than fulfill his promises to me it would be a full time job. But lets think through some of the things that God is faithful about."
"Verse 5 says he loves righteousness and justice. Where have you heard about God and justice before?" We recently finished a series of lessons on Micah 6:8 (and learned the song) so they got the connection with the "to do justly" part of the verse. God is getting his people to do justly.
But the part of the chapter that I really wanted to focus on was the second part of verse 5. It says, "The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord." Ask them, "What does it mean if something is full?" They responded with good answers. Pull out a plate and whatever food you are serving that morning. We had root beer floats and pretzels for the snack this morning. "The Bible says that the earth is full with the Lord's lovingkindness. I want you to tell me when this plate is full." First hold up the empty plate. "Is this plate full?" They will respond "no." "You know that is how some people see the lovingkindness of the Lord. They don't see it anywhere even though the earth is full of it. You hear them say, 'If God loves us, why are their bad people in the world.' They don't see lovingkindness from God anywhere, or if they do see lovingkindness, they don't see that it is from God." Then put a few pretzels (or whatever) on the plate. "There are other people who see a little bit of the Lords lovingkindness in the world. Maybe they are just learning about God for the first time, or maybe they are new Christians. But as they grow, they will see more and more of the Lords love and kindness in the world." Next grab the bag of pretzels. "But for us, God's lovingkindness fills the world." Pour the whole bag of pretzels onto the plate such that it fills it then spills out all over the table and floor. They will love it. "This is what the Lord's lovingkindness is like for the person who loves, who has faith in the Lord"
"Look at verse 22." Give a minute for them to get there. "It says, 'Let your lovingkindness, O Lord be upon us, according as we have hoped in you.' That means that the more we have faith in God, the more we love God, the more we trust God, the more will will see and feel his lovingkindness in the world." Organize them into groups. We just grouped around our meeting tables. "I want each of your groups to think about examples you see in the world of God's lovingkindness that is filling the world. I'll give you 5 minutes." After a few minutes call on each group..."Tell me a way you see God's lovingkindness in the world." I got great answers like, friends, butterflies, conversation, the Bible, food, sunshine, health, computers, rainbows, and so on all great examples.
The last thing was to look at verses 13 and 15. "In verse13, it says that God sees all of us and in verse 15 it says he understands every thing we do, everything about us. How do we see the Lord's lovingkindness in the things in our world? Someone said dogs were an example of God's lovingkindness. Well I think dogs wag their tails when they are happy because God understands people and he knows that makes people happy. I think cats purr because God knows people and that makes people happy. You know, after it rains, God could have made it such that everything stinks. But instead, after it rains there is a beautiful rainbow. I believe that rainbow is there for you and me. Because God sees me, God understands me, and God knows that a rainbow would make me happy. That is just one example of how 'the earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord'". Going back to verse 1, we should give praise for that.
You might choose to have a closing prayer where all are invited to participate. Say something like, "Lord you have filled the earth with your lovingkindness. We thank you for the way we see your lovingkindness through..." and have the folks chime out anything that comes to mind.
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© Jeff McNair