Sardines, sand, and sin!

I often wonder what checkout people think when I come through the line when preparing for a youth group meeting. Tonight's cart included a squirt gun, a can of sardines, and a spray bottle. No, I'm not interested in a candy bar, thank you, I'll stick with my sardines! lol Today was a slow youth group...just 3 kids. As fall arrives, I anticipate our numbers to climb back up, too much going on right now for everyone. Britt, Garriot, and Jessica. We started out with a game of love tag. One person got to "be God" and they got to use the squirt gun to squirt "love" at the other players. The other players had to run around in a small area and try to avoid God, which was hard to do! Next we came inside for a game of Bible chutes & ladders. Those are some smart kids! Next we watched a comedy clip called "Avoiding God." In it, a person in a "GOD" cap is constantly hanging around with another person... when he wakes up, when he goes to sleep, when he has a bath, when he eats, when he is with other friends, etc. There is no avoiding God even though he tries to pay God off and trick him. We talked about avoiding God and different people in the Bible that tried to avoid God. Our Bible lesson for the day was the story of Jonah. We did a blindfolded Bible study. I blindfolded each of them and took them into fellowship hall to sit in a chair I had set up previously on top of a drop mat. As I read the story of Jonah, they were sprayed by the waves, blown by the wind, heard God's echoing voice, felt the crash of the ship,felt the sand on the beach, and smelled the inside of the fish (hence the sardines). After our story was over, we talked about different ways we try to avoid God and how we can plan time just to hang out with God. We then made little plaques that said things like Got God? God Time? Got Time? to remind us that we need to spend time with God each day and that we can't avoid Him no matter how hard we try!