Object Lesson Baptism Holy Spirit and Our Response

Here is a nice object lesson that illustrates the idea of Gods Holy Spirit and it's effect on our lives.
Bible reference: Mark1:9-15 - Jesus is Baptised by John.
We did this at Flashpoint http://thomsoneu.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/first-flashpoint-of-2012.html

The preparation information is at the end.
If you use this idea, or even if you just like it, how about leaving a comment.

"This white cloth is clean.  Imagine it represents us.  Clean and ready to do things.  We want to go into the worls and help out.  But the world can be  a bit of a grotty place at times.

Point to bottle of world and ask what colour does this remind you of.  I thought 'wee' but it appears our kids are just too nice and suggested 'apple juice'

We go into the world wanting to make it a better place

But sometimes things just don't go so well and everything gets a bit well messed up.  It can become a drag.  No matter how hard we try, we do not seem to be able to fix the world and at the same time, we get dragged down.

Made dirty.

Ask: "When we get dirty, what do we do?"

Hopefully some kid will say - "Have a bath" or "wash"

We wash in water.  Here I have some water and I will wash the cloth.

In a way, this is like to part of the baptism we see.  We see the person being washed in water.

And you can see that some of the dirt comes off.  But not all.

There is a spiritual side to baptism.  In the bible reading it was described like this

(Can get some kid to read)
Mark1:¹⁰ As soon as Jesus came up out of the water, he saw heaven opening and the Spirit coming down on him...

We put the dirty cloth into the bottle marked God and 

That cleans it up.

Hopefully some kids will go "woh" or even "wow"


The story does not stop here though.  Imagine we have asked God's holy spirit into our lives.  What happens next?

We are challenged to stay in the world and do our best.  This time though we are working with God and we can have a much better effect.

(Put the now white again cloth back into the grotty grey world)  In this photo, I had inadvertantly moved the God bottle to the left that rather confuses the photo story.

Now look.  Because we have God's spirit in us, the world gets cleaned up and we stay clean.

A nice comparison.  The cleaned up world and the grotty old water.








And now the PREPARATION

Safety

These days you have to have a risk plan for anything.

The chemicals are pretty inert. The MSDS for fixer indicates to use gloves for
prolonged use. It also says to use eye protection although I have to confess to having
never used eye protection in the past.

Do not drink fixer – If it is drunk give water or milk unless the patient is unconscious or
experiencing convulsions. Contact Poison Control for further guidance.

Spills - Wash with water.

Iodine Component:
Vapors severely irritate and can burn the mucous membranes and respiratory tract. So
don’t take deep breaths of it. However we are using quite dilute iodine.

Basically it is OK to do it in the room but have a window open.

Ingredients
Starch (Available from supermarkets)
White cotton material (old white sheet)
3 large glass jars.  I used fruit preserving jars $2 ea from cheap shop.
Tincture of Iodine. Available from chemists.
Photographic fixer. $20 (Available from photographic shops but for how long???)
Bucket and towel and a tray if you want to soak up the mess if you spill.

Preparation
Well beforehand-
Buy some starch. (From Supermarket)
Get a white cotton cloth like an old sheet and tear it into pieces. The size depends on
the size of the glass jars that you are going to use for the demo. The reason you are
tearing up more than 1 is so you have some to practice with.

Put the starch into water and put in the cloth and let it soak up the starch.  I use lots of starch and let it get in and squeeze it out a few times so hopefully plenty of starch in the fibers of the cotton.. Hang the cloth up to dry.

Mix the fixer up like cordiall.  In these jars I had about 2cm of fixer and the rest water. I think its quite quaint that God is the Fixer.  :)

The water is just water.

For the World, fill the bottle 3/4 with water then pour in a little of the iodine.  It needs to look like .... apple juice.  Too light and the cloth does not go grey.

Practice Practice Practice

Like a good organised person, don't leave this until the last minute.  Do it and work out your talk at home.  If it's worth doing it's worth doing properly.  Practice means you can engage the kids and be safe!.
You will find that the God (The fixer) does not wear out as he (she) doesn't :).  You need to re do the iodine and the water for each attempt.  I suggest making up about 6 - 10 cloth pieces all at the same time so they have the same amount of starch in them.  Then you can experiment with how strong to make the iodine.

Oops

What happens if on the day, the world does not get fixed when you put the cloth laced with Fixer back in it.  Maybe the God mixture was too weak or there was too much iodine.  Well pour in some God.  The world can always do with more God.