Dear Parents,
This week in High Life we continued our series called “Happy” in which we are learning about what true happiness is and what brings it. This week our focus was on the phrase from Matthew 5: “Happy are the meek.” Meekness is a word that is often interchangeable with humility, and that was our focus. I really like how the lesson defined meekness: strength under control. A lot of people associate meekness with weakness (maybe because they rhyme!) but that’s really not the case. Meekness, or humility, does require strength, and it also requires a great deal of self-control.
To see a picture of what it looks like to act in humility, we studied the story of the centurion who came to Jesus on behalf of his sick servant (Matthew 8:5-13). This man was a powerful Roman officer, but he humbled himself and asked for Jesus help because there was nothing he could do himself to fix his servant. This is humility: recognizing that there is something broken in us that we cannot fix, but that Jesus can and will fix, and asking for his help.
How is that connected to happiness? Well, it’s in humility that we can find healing and newness from Jesus. We can be freed from our “ailments” and our messes. That sounds happy to me. We carry around so much junk everyday, thinking that it’s just our burden to bear. And there is truth in the idea that Jesus asks us to pick up our cross and follow him. But he doesn’t ask us to pick up our baggage, our junk, our issues, and follow him. Those things hold us down; they hold us back. When we humble ourselves before Jesus and ask for his healing, then we can find true happiness.
Together we discussed questions like:
- What makes you happy?
- What do you think the word meek means?
- Can anyone share an example of this process we’re talking about? This process of humility, realizing I’m broken, realizing I can’t fix it, and believing that Jesus can heal and make me new?
We didn’t have quite as many discussion questions this week because the youth did an artistic activity during some of the time typically used for discussion. We asked each student to draw three buildings as representations of the three main ideas of the lesson: a broken down building (I am broken); a building undergoing repairs (I can’t fix me, but Jesus can); and a brand new fabulous building (I am a new creation in Jesus).
Consider how you can continue this discussion at home with your student. Maybe come back to these discussion questions. Or share a time when you experienced the cycle of the centurion – recognition of brokenness, asking for help, and healing. We want our Sunday school lessons to be more than just a thing we do on Sunday mornings; we want our youth to grow and become changed by what they hear in class!
Blessings,
Shane & Christine Cordle and Catherine Burleigh