The Red Rope (Expecting Christmas)

We see in the book of Joshua chapters 1 and 2 that after Moses died, Joshua became leader of God's Israelite people. Joshua sent two spies into Jericho to see how easy they would be to defeat. While in Jericho, they were discovered and had to hide in the house of a prostitute named Rahab. Rahab had heard about what God had done for his people. "For the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath." She lived on the city wall so she was able to let them down a rope through a window in her house. The spies told her, keep this red rope hanging out your window, so when we come and take over Jericho, you and your family will be saved. Not only was her life saved, but she was grafted into the Israelite clan because she believed and followed God. And the best part is, SHE was in the lineage of Jesus. Rahab was Jesus' great great great... grandma!

Red rope is easy to make Christmas-y so I just let the kiddos decorate with some red garland. (I wanted to hang garland along the fence outside but it was too cold.) The red rope was protection for Rahab and her family. They hung it because they believed God and acted on it. Another wonderful foreshadowing of our salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Jericho continued (day 19)

To review the story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho (and to get a little work done) we built the wall out of socks. First though, we had to find all the matches :) Dawn Salazar gave me a great idea to play "go fish" with the socks. It actually encourages language and math skills because you have to describe the attributes of each sock you want a match for, "do you have a white tall sock with a green stripe on the toe." Anyway, after matching the socks we built the wall. Von wanted his hot wheels to be the people and he marched them around the wall to act out the story. Of course, knocking down the wall was the highlight.

the point? God is STRONG

The warrior leader (day 18)

Joshua and the battle of Jericho begins on page 108 of the storybook Bible. It is found in Joshua 3 and 6. After reading the story the kids decorated pieces of paper and rolled them up to be trumpets. They were a bit hyper so I also had them run/walk around the house outside 7 times, followed by trumpet blasting and yelling.

the point? God wins in unusual ways