A Family Break-up

Martyn Payne

Introduction:

The following assembly outline with classroom follow-up is part of a series that explores the theme of breaking and restoring relationships, using stories from the Old and New Testaments. In each one we meet groups and individuals whose relationship with God and each other is damaged for a variety of reasons, but we also read about how God then works to mend what has been broken.

This session focuses on what we can learn from the troubled relationships between Abram, his wife Sarai and their maid Hagar, who was forced to run away into the desert. (Abram and Sarai later changed their names to Abraham and Sarah.)

Preparation:

Use the retelling of the story from The Barnabas Schools' Bible, story 14, page 22 'Sarai's Maidservant'.

This story is found in Genesis 16:1-16.

See also story 18, page 27 (Genesis 21:1-21).

You will also need eight cue cards with phrases on each side that link to the breaking and making of good relationships (see the wording in 'Development' below) and eight children to help read out these clearly as part of the assembly.

Development:

1. When you feel bullied and badly treated, it is a natural response to want to run away and hide.

Start your assembly with some prearranged shouts from different children around the hall. You will need to prime about eight children to help you with this, reading from cue cards phrases such as:

'It's not fair!'

'It's all your fault!'

'I'm never speaking to you again!'

'He/she has always been your favourite!'

'You never believe me!'

'Why is she/he always right!'

'I can't stand it anymore!'

'I'm leaving!'

(End with a dramatic slamming shut of a big book, like the slamming of a door)

I wonder if you've heard anything like that before?

Sadly, things like this are often heard.

Talk about a situation you know of that has made you feel like running away. Now relate it to situations that the children can recognize.

Maybe these have led to running up to their bedrooms and slamming the door!

2. This is what happened to Hagar. She couldn't help feeling pleased with herself when she found she was carrying her master's child, but clearly she let her delight show too much. Quite understandably this got to Sarai, who was Abram's wife, and even though it was her idea that Hagar should become a surrogate mum (just like in the soap operas), it didn't turn out to be that easy. I expect there were some really spectacular rows between Sarai and Hagar in this Bible story!

3. Now read the story, using the version from The Barnabas Schools' Bible, story 14, or a similar retelling.

4. Abram wasn't much of a peacemaker in this story. He just gives in and let's Hagar run off, carrying his precious child. Anything for a quiet life maybe! Even God's great leaders are only human beings in the end, and the Bible doesn't hide this fact and their faults.

I wonder how would you have tried to make peace between Hagar and Sarai?

Ask for some ideas before inviting the speakers from the first part of the assembly to turn over their cue cards and call out in order the following phrases that might help heal this and other troubled relationships:

'Stop shouting and calm down.'

'Take a deep breath and think before you speak.'

'Try to see it from my point of view.'

'Give me a chance to explain.'

'Listen to what I have to say first.'

'It's not the way you think it is.'

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to be this way.'

'OK, let's talk about it.'

(End by carefully opening the big book that you slammed shut earlier as a symbol that the relationship is on the mend now.)

5. Often it needs another person to come along and help mend a broken relationship. In Hagar's case, it was God who intervened and helped her to have the courage to go back and try again. I wonder whether we can be the ones to help bring friends back together again when they fall out at school. Or maybe we can be peacemakers at home?

6. End your assembly with some space for reflection and quiet prayer, using the words on the cue cards that have been spoken by your eight helpers. Bring these up to the front and as you show the angry side and then turn it to the positive side, ask some wondering questions such as:

I wonder how we can turn impatience with others into a willingness to listen?

I wonder how we can learn to hear what others are really saying and not just shout?

I wonder how we can find ways to cope when we feel hard done by?

I wonder who could be a peacemaker when we feel like running away?

I wonder how we can make things better today and not worse, at school and at home?

I wonder how we can turn anger into love?

7. Key thought: Christians believe that God is always there to help people choose the way of peace and love rather than hatred and anger. It doesn't mean it will be easy, but God promises the strength to be different. This is what Hagar experienced.

I wonder how we can be peacemakers today and so become known as people who make things better and not worse?

In the classroom follow-up to this assembly there will be an opportunity to explore all this further.

Ideas for classroom follow-up in a circle time

1. Pick up on the theme of the assembly by having a set of 'the angry words' from the simple drama on small cue cards in the centre of your circle of children. Invite the children, one at a time, to pick up one and talk about a time when they have either heard these words or maybe said them themselves. Take care not to ask the children to say anything they don't want to. However, there should be plenty of examples of angry situations to share.

2. Some of the children could, in pairs, act out a situation as a small piece of role play, in which the opening line is, 'It's all your fault!' and the final line is, 'That's it. I'm leaving!'

Or can the whole group rehearse some of the arguments for a given situation, using similar words, and then together invite ideas as to how it could have been resolved without a dramatic run-away scene at the end?

3. I expect that there was another row between Abram and Sarai, after Hagar left.

Remind the group of the Bible story and then ask if the group can suggest what might have been said.

Perhaps Abram never expected it would come to this and Sarai was both glad and perhaps a little embarrassed that she had clearly pushed Hagar too far.

Create a series of freeze-frames (photo stills from the story), in which two or three children per scene capture the mood of all that has happened.

Suggested scenes include:

Sarai sadly suggesting to Abram that Hagar become a substitute mum

Hagar proud to be pregnant and Sarai's reaction

Sarai's complaint to Abram

Sarai getting at Hagar

Sarai and Abram's reaction to Hagar's departure

Take some digital photographs of each of these scenes, which you can then show to the group to help them build a storyboard with captions of what has happened so far.

4. Now step into the next event of the story, where Hagar is lost in the desert - frightened and alone.

What does the group think is going through her mind?

She has lost everything and might not even survive the journey.

Who would want her now, with a baby on the way?

What sort of prayer might she have said to God?

5. But God searches for and finds Hagar. Christians believe that he is a God for the lost and lonely in particular.

Look again at the story from The Barnabas Schools' Bible, story 14.

Hagar is amazed that God chooses to bother about her, despite all that has happened. Many people have taken comfort from this story.

But it wasn't an easy message that God gave her.

I wonder what went through Hagar's mind when God told her to return to where the problem was?

Can the children think of some modern-day situations, where to go back and face the music is the right, but difficult, thing to do?

6. Hager is so excited that God sees and cares for her situation that the place is even renamed in honour of what happened. (N.B. the phrase 'angel of the Lord' is often used in the Old Testament to mean a visit from God himself.)

Does it surprise any of the children that Christians believe that God is interested in everything that happens to them in their lives?

In the Barnabas book A-cross the World there is a chapter on the God's Eye Cross from Latin America. It is made with coloured wools wound tightly round and round two crossed sticks. Look here for a picture of this cross.

This cross is a simple way to remind people of faith that God watches over them in love, wherever they go and whatever happens to them, just as Hagar experienced. It was in the knowledge of this love that Hagar found the strength to return and renew the relationship that had been broken, even though it was clearly not all her fault.

What does the class think of this?

Provide materials for the children to make this cross for themselves, using kebab sticks with the sharp ends cut and coloured pieces of wool.

7. Hagar must have clung on to God's comforting words to her during the years that followed, as she brought up her son Ishmael within Abram's family.

However, in Genesis 21:9-21, she is once again sent away into the desert (see story 18 in The Barnabas Schools' Bible). This time she has her boy with her and she begins to despair.

But again the God who sees finds her and provides for her needs.

Read this story as a part of a time of reflection at the end of the session. Then, linking it to the provision of water to Hagar, slowly pour each child a small drink of water, as a way to think about how a peacemaker, in this case God, will always stand by someone when they are lost and in need of help.