Scripture: 2 Samuel 13-19
Learning Objectives:
- Students will learn when people don’t follow God’s commands; their lives often become full of bad choices and consequences. .
- Students will learn pride can cause people to make poor choices.
- Students will learn pride often leads to disaster.
- Students will learn how to describe characters in a story.
Guiding Question: How can students learn to write descriptions of characters in stories?
Materials: Bibles, pencils, paper
Procedure: Review the story of Absalom, focusing especially on Absalom’s physical appearance and how that affected the way Absalom and others viewed him. Absalom’s hair was a sign of his beauty in that time. Some of the people were attracted to the idea of Absalom as king because of his good looks and his outward appearance. God knew however that Absalom’s heart was not one who longed to worship and obey God. In fact one could say Absalom was quite ugly on the outside. To some people in the story Absalom was a hero, to others a villain. Often we decide whether someone is the hero or villain in a story by the way they are first described by the author.
Read the descriptions of various people in the Bible when they are first mentioned without saying the person’s name. Can the students guess who the person is by the description? Was the person someone who tried to obey God or someone who refused to obey God? Have the students write a brief description of a person. They should then read it to the class who will decide if it sounds like the person will be a hero or a villain in a story.
Additional Questions: How can students use descriptive writing in script writing?
Supplemental Activity: Have the students create a script for a story with two descriptive characters. The students can act out the script after it is revised and completed.