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 God sees us as beautiful.
Guiding Question: How can students learn how God views our beauty vs. how society views our beauty?
Materials: Bibles, pictures of “beauty standards” of people from different time periods
Procedure: Tell students 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.
Bring in images of what people considered beautiful in various times and places. Try to find as many opposing images as possible – for example, a time period that though someone who was thin was beautiful and another when people thought those were heavy were beautiful. Have students compare and contrast the various standards of beauty. After comparing the various ideas of beauty, ask students what God considers beautiful. Older students may be able to give examples from the Bible and real life characteristics God would consider beautiful. Ask students what they think they can do to be more beautiful to God. Encourage them to work on that godly, inner beauty. If time allows you may want to discuss what they can do to remember to see people as God does and not be as worried about the outer appearance of others.
Additional Questions: How can students learn to recognize how God sees them as beautiful?
Supplemental Activity: Have students draw a picture of themselves on paper (or take a picture of students and tape their picture in the middle of a piece of paper). Have the students write around the picture Bible verses that tell of God’s views of our beauty.