Lesson 6: New Names, New Beginnings

I'm still updating and backfilling some thoughts on the lessons we did before I started this blog, so this is lesson six, which happened a while ago.

I can't really say much about Lesson 6, because JC and I went out of town and his sister and brother-in-law taught for us. I'll give you the basic outline, though, because Konni (sister) said that the kids really enjoyed it, and seemed to understand it.

First, they (Konni and Jamie) asked the kids about their names. Why were they given that name, did they know what it meant, etc? A few of the kids knew the meanings of their names, but those who didn't had fun looking them up in a baby name book. Two of the boys (David and Joshua) knew that they were named after people from the Bible. None of the kids seemed to know why their parents had given them that particular name. Jamie told them that he was named after his dad. Konni (Konstanze) told them that she was named after Mozart's wife.

"When do people change their names?" Konni asked the kids. They came up with a few examples, like when someone gives you a nickname that sticks, or when you get married. "That's right," Konni told them. "And sometimes God gives people a new name, usually when he is in the process of changing their lives in some dramatic way."

They looked at Biblical examples of people changing their names, and discussed the circumstances surrounding these changes (Abram/Abraham, Sarai/Sarah, Jacob/Israel, Saul/Paul). On our family tree, they squeezed in these extra names.

Konni reported that the kids liked the lesson a lot, but she didn't have much else to share.