Genesis 19 - Sodom and Gomorrah Quiet Book Page

In Genesis 19, Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed and Lot's wife turns into a pillar of salt, but Lot and his two daughters escape.

Memory Verse: “At dawn the next morning the angels became insistent. “Hurry,” they said to Lot. “Take your wife and your two daughters who are here. Get out right now, or you will be swept away in the destruction of the city!”” Genesis 19:15

Materials needed to create the Sodom and Gomorrah quiet book page:

• A4 felt background sheet - I used cream
• felt scraps in brown, orange, yellow, gray, light blue, sparkly white (or white plus glitter glue), and various other colours
• furry yarn in a smokey/fire colour
• one pop stick
• hot glue and glue gun
• my free Sodom and Gomorrah template download

This quiet book page was inspired by a page from Glued To Glory's Quiet Book #16: Old Testament Bible. If you want to simplify this page - head over to her site and take a look. Heck, just take a look anyway! The more inspiration the better.

Cut out a section of brown felt to cover the bottom half of your page and sew a horizontal buttonhole in matching thread towards the top of the brown and just to the left of the middle of the page. (You can use the template to line up where other things may be positioned to work out where a good spot is. This will form the pop stick slot for Lot's wife to be inserted in and out of so it should be wide enough for that but not much wider to stop her from moving around too much.) Then sew the brown felt to the bottom of the page around all edges.

Sew down your sun, the buildings, three little people and the right mountain. Double the felt for the left mountain and sew it down leaving the cave mouth open.

Cut out Lot's wife out of yellow felt and sew her down around all edges except the bottom to a piece of sparkly white felt (or add sparkles with glitter glue later), making sure she is facing the right direction for each colour. Cut her out and insert a pop stick, securing it and the bottom edge of lot's wife with hot glue.

Sew down the city in rows, adding your fire and brimstone furry yarn over the top of the two rows of city using zig zag stich before finishing with the city wall. 

Finished!

Difficulty Level = Intermediate.

You will need to do a fair amount of hand turning of the wheel on your sewing machine as there are lots of small fiddly pieces.

Key Learning Areas and Skills

• Genesis 19 - Learn about where our focus should be - on where we are going (Heaven) rather than love of our current situations. Also, there is a Tale of two cities going on here - repentance is the difference between the different treatment of Sodom and Gomorrah and Nineveh.
• Inserting - insert Lot's wife into the buttonhole, then pull her out, flip her over and insert again! Explore the cave with your finger.
• Imaginative play - Lot's wife runs away but looks back and becomes a pillar of salt
• Fine Motor Skills - all quiet books encourage fine motor skill development
• Hand-eye Co-ordination - all quiet books encourage hand-eye co-ordination

Read the Chapter

Genesis 19

Devotional

Sodom & Gomorrah · Tiko & Gitta

Verse 13 talks about the outcry that has reached the ears of the LORD against Sodom. The things reported to have been done there are recorded in Ezekiel 16:49-50. "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen." Whilst God longs to forgive and have all come to repentance, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed as a warning that sin results in death. You can read a thorough explanation of the text at What was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? by Greg Koukl.

Had Lot taken the warning more seriously, would his wife have looked back? Yes, she was sorrowing for her other children who had not left with them, but should we also loose our salvation because someone else chooses not to accept it? Did she end up any happier? She showed that she cared more for her treasures that she left behind than for the favour God had showed her.

Jesus said that the people of his day were worse than those of Sodom - it is because they claimed to follow God, yet their lives did not reflect that. It seems to me that the Third Commandment applies to Christians more than anyone else. I know that mis-using the Holy names of God as swear words is not good, but it seems worse to me to claim that you are a Christian and then not live up to that claim as of course I frequently don't. People who use God's name as a cuss word probably don't even believe in God and therefore it is not such bad intent. But to actively say "I follow Christ" and then live life like there are no consequences to sin is to malign His name so much worse. We are giving Christ a bad name. People think that if that's what Christianity is like then I want no part of it, and we can hardly blame them.

Rather than miss out because others we care about are missing out, we should use our witness to encourage others to take the warning seriously. This world is destined for destruction, and we should make every effort to influence those we care about to accept God's love and provision of salvation. As the song Freely, Freely by Carol Owens says "Go in My Name and because YOU believe, others will know that I live."

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Hearing from you gives me great encouragement!

DIY Hymn Board & Sunset Times Felt Board Play Set

This DIY felt board set has been a real hit! I think for the lower primary aged kids numbers and letters become pretty fun.

My sister says her kids wouldn't even know what a Hymn Board is. Even though they attend church every week, they go to a church where hymns are seldom played, contemporary Christian music dominates, and the words are projected onto a screen.

Fortunately for us, we often visit smaller country churches where a hymn board is still mounted on the wall and a Hymnal can be found tucked into the back of a pew.

I have been singing Tahlia to sleep with hymns since she was born so she knows a few and it melts your heart to hear her randomly singing them. 

Because we believe in keeping the fourth commandment, our church also has a sunset times board on the opposite side of the pulpit to the hymn board. In Genesis God says there was evening and there was morning, the first day and so on. Like the Jewish people, we know that the day begins and ends at sunset. So it is handy to know what time sunset is so we know when Sabbath is coming.

I had intended that these would be part of a church (as opposed to Bible) themed quiet book, where Tahlia could copy the numbers from the board at church and kind of follow along with church each week. And they will probably make it there eventually, but for now we are having lots of fun with them mounted on our felt board like you would find them on a wall at church.

Tahlia has been learning to follow along with the words in a hymnal of late, and I have been encouraging her to flip through and find the right one that is coming up next based on what the hymn board tells us. Apparently that's not so fun... too much like school work I think. But for some reason the Hymn Board and Sunset Times Felt Board Play Set rates high on the fun scale.

How We Made the Hymn Board and Sunset Times Felt Board Play Set

You will need:

• Korean hard felt in gray, black and white
• Sewing thread to match
• My DIY Hymn Board and Sunset Times Felt Board Play Set Free Pattern Template
• A Sizzix Original and capitals lollipop alphabet/numeral die set or another method of cutting numbers about 2.5 x 3 cm in size - see my post on Letter cutting hacks. (Or you could just print them onto the felt using the sublimation/heat press method and save yourself a lot of sewing - see my post Sublimation Printing on Felt - Test).

1. Use the template to cut out your pieces (for the number cards it would be easier to rule up a piece of white felt and cut them out that way but I included the piece for size reference). I made 63 number cards (six of each number 0-9) and 3 colon cards for displaying the time. That way there is an extra in case one gets lost. My white felt sheet divided into 63, so that is how I decided how many to make. Plus 60 number cards is a common amount if you were to buy a set for an actual hymn board, so I figured there would generally be enough of each number required.

2. Double the thickness of your black runners by sewing them to another piece of black felt and cutting them out.

3. Position your black runners in the positions shown on the next two pages of the template. You can cut out the black runners places on the positioning templates and lay the runners in the position and pin, then remove the template. It doesn't matter if it rips when you take it off.

You could use this pattern to make a sports score board too!

4. Sew the runners down the center for the ticker ones and either the upper or lower edge of the thinner ones to allow the number cards to slide into the track formed.

5. Use an original sizzix to cut out the required letters and numbers and sew in place on the backboard and number cards. I used the centers of the zeros to make the colons for the sunset times.

6. Play with your DIY Hymn Board & Sunset Times Felt Board Play Set!

Baby likes to play too!

If you make one of these please tell us about it below or send us an email with a picture. It would make our day. It actually took me at least 1.5 hours drawing up the template on this one so you guys could download it (not including the design time so I could make it initially) so it would really make it feel worthwhile to see some pictures if you do make one 😍

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Genesis 37 - Joseph's Coat Quiet Book Page

In Genesis 37, Joseph is given a special coat by his father - his brothers get jealous and sell him as a slave.

Memory Verse: “Then they said to one another, “Look, this dreamer is coming! Come therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit; and we shall say, ‘Some wild beast has devoured him.’ We shall see what will become of his dreams!”” Genesis 37:19-20

Materials needed to create the Joseph's Coat quiet book page:

• A4 felt background sheet - I used green
• felt scrap in brown for the back of the pit pocket
• hot glue and glue gun
• Betty Lukens Felt book 01 Bible Stories available at Koorong
• sewing thread to best match the page
• scissors!

Cut out all the pieces for this page, and the page itself from the set. The Betty Lukens FAQ section has posted a cutting tips PDF.

Cut out a section of brown felt to cover above the pit pocket to as far down the page as you can manage whilst leaving room to sew the page onto the background felt sheet. Hot glue it in position along the top edge of the pit and down both sides and the bottom to form a pocket for the small Joseph.

Sew the page onto the background felt along three sides, leaving the top edge open to form a pocket. Pop the pieces inside (or better yet, play with them)!

Finished!

The pocket is not big enough so Joseph looks like he could easily get out!

Difficulty Level = Easy, plus No Sew version.

A very easy quiet book page!
Just use hot glue wherever sewing is recommended for a no sew version.

Key Learning Areas and Skills

• Genesis 37 - jealousy can lead to devastating results
• Imaginative play - tell the story of Joseph - his dreams, his coat of many colours, and how he was treated badly by his brothers and sold as a slave to Egypt
• Dress up - dress Joseph in his coat of many colours
• Colours - name all the colours on Joseph's coat
• Inserting - insert Joseph into the pit pocket
• Fine Motor Skills - all quiet books encourage fine motor skill development
• Hand-eye Co-ordination - all quiet books encourage hand-eye co-ordination

Read the Chapter

Genesis 37

Devotional

What a difficult life for a young man to find himself in suddenly! One minute the favourite son of a wealthy man, the next a slave in a foreign country. Nevertheless it seems that his father had brought him up with good values despite his favouritism because we find Joseph sticking to his God and his morals through some very tough circumstances.

Whilst scripture doesn't say what the heinous crime that Joseph dobs his brothers in to their father for, the rabbis have recorded it in chapter 38 of the Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer. While you might not believe everything written in this document, the reason Jacob sends Joseph to check on his brothers and the flocks makes sense in this context. Apparently Zilpah and Bilhah's sons were eating the flesh of the animals in the flocks whilst the animals were still alive. Pretty gruesome no matter how you interpret that. And quite a no-no for a group of people who were bound by kosher law to drain the blood before roasting the meat. If they were in that much of a hurry to eat that they didn't bother to kill the animal, I can only imagine what passed through their lips. Eww.

It may be that Jacob's favouritism of Joseph was well deserved. And it may be that the coat was a present to try to cheer him up after enduring the harsh treatment of his brothers, who knows? There is a lot of back-story missing I think.

Joseph's clothes give punctuation to his story. I love the Joseph quiet book page that Patricia from Patty Cake Cafe made (with a free template) showing all four of Joseph's "costume changes" as he passes through each stage of his life.

The four stages are:

1. Favoured son
2. Slave in Egypt
3. Prisoner in Egypt
4. Pharaoh's Second-in-command

Image source

The coat of many colours is a bit of a mystery. The fact that Jacob made it kinda says to me that he was still a bit of a Mama's Boy. Weaving was a woman's job.  It takes longer to weave using many colours, so that increases it's value. But was the coat made of many colours? Scholars are not so sure. The word is largely unknown in the Bible, being used only one other time in connection to Tamar the daughter of King David. Some think that this coat was 'girly', and I think I remember reading in Robert Alter's commentary on Genesis that Jacob calls his other sons 'handsome' but Joseph he calls 'beautiful', presumably because he looked like his mother Rachel. While this is all very interesting, I can hardly imagine Joseph's brothers being jealous of a 'girly' robe.

Other scholars I read said that the word more likely refers to the arm-length of the robe. I guess it would also take longer to weave a coat with sleeves in it, so it would also be more valuable. It probably reached to the palms of his hands, and a coat like that was not made for hard work. Perhaps Jacob kept him from hard work in order to keep him from being corrupted by his brothers. Or perhaps he wanted to keep him home to teach him God's word as it had been revealed that Joseph was to be the leader of the family through his dreams.

Whatever the case, Joseph's coat has a story to tell. And I am sure his brothers enjoyed dirtying it up on him. But they couldn't stop God's plan for Joseph. In fact their attempt to rid themselves of him ultimately helped Joseph achieve his greatness. So next time you are in a tough situation, just remember that all things work together for the good of those who love the LORD (Romans 8:28) just as they did for Joseph.

The same is true for the story of Jesus. It is well-known that Joseph is a type of Christ. There are many similarities occurring within the two stories. Whilst Jesus started out as the favoured Son of God in Heaven, like Joseph He lost His glory, descending to Earth and was sold, betrayed, and was unrecognised by His brethren, but will ultimately take up a position of power once again. The Jewish leaders betrayal of Jesus ultimately helped Him achieve God's plan of reconciling man to Himself by providing for our sins, just as Joseph's betrayal ultimately led to reconciliation with and provision for his brothers.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Jacob and Sons/Joseph's Coat

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What have you always imagined Joseph's coat looking like?