Week 2 · about 45 minutes
A Garden, a Choice, and a Promise
Genesis 2–3 · Memory verse Genesis 3:15
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Queues the lesson plan, a coloring page from this part of the Bible (God Made a Good World), the related word search and answer key (Seven Days of Creation), the memory-verse tracer, and a parent slip.
Five-minute object lesson
Prop: a piece of fruit and a small bandage
Hold up a piece of fruit and a small bandage. In about five minutes, tell the class this: Adam and Eve enjoy God’s garden, choose their own way, and hear that God will not abandon them. Show the prop and ask, “What does this have to do with A Garden, a Choice, and a Promise?” Let two children answer. Then read Genesis 3:15 together: “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.”” Close by asking one child to say the lesson back in their own words, using the prop.
Story script
God planted a garden called Eden and placed the first people there. Rivers watered the trees. Fruit hung within reach. In the cool of the day, God walked with them, the way a father walks with children he loves. There was one tree they were not to eat from, because trusting God meant letting him be God.
A sneaky serpent twisted God’s words. The fruit looked good, and the people wanted to decide good and bad for themselves. They ate. Then the garden did not feel like home. They hid. Shame is a heavy blanket, and they tried to wear it.
God came looking. He did not pretend the choice was fine, and he did not walk away forever. He told them the truth about what their choice had broken. Then he made a promise: one day a child would come who would crush the serpent’s power. God covered them and sent them out of the garden, still loved, still known.
Kids make wrong choices too. Hiding makes the wrong heavier. God still comes looking, and the promise he made in the garden points all the way to Jesus. You can tell the truth tonight and go to sleep uncovered by shame, because God would rather forgive you than lose you.
Group game
Pass the fruit. When the music of clapping stops, that child says one true thing. Then pass a bandage and say, God still comes looking for us.
Craft
Draw a garden. Add a dark gate and a bright path leading out, to show both the trouble and the promise.
Memory verse
Genesis 3:15
“I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.””
Take-home prayer
God, thank you for coming to find people who hide. Please forgive my wrong choices and help me trust your promise. Amen.