Kerygma of the Wrist

Church school was last Saturday; seeing as how Theophany was the previous Sunday, I thought a lesson on baptism was apt, so...I came up with what you see to your right. You may have seen something like this before, perhaps slightly different. We not only made these, but "scavenger hunted" around the church grounds for the envelopes with certain colored beads (and the clue to finding the next color of bead) in them. The black and red are where I remember them being in Southern Baptist VBS -- the black being sin and death which, due to the Fall, casts us out of the Kingdom (Jn. 3:5); and the red being the bloody death of Christ in which we participate in baptism (Rom. 6:3-4a) -- but instead of the white bead following, the blue (baptism -- Acts 22:16) and yellow (the oil of chrismation -- Acts 2:38) followed, after which the resurrected life of Christ follows (Rom 6:4b). The purple (an Orthodox addition, to be sure) is the color of Great Lent in our parishes, representing a lifetime of repentance and laying hold of that for which Christ laid a hold of us (Phil. 3:12).

The serendipitous side effect of this has been multiple opportunities to interact with Hope, who likes to ask, "What black say? What red say?" and so on. If any readers ever get involved in a church school program, this might be a good, visual, and kinesthetic activity to do that illustrates how we are brought from death to life, from darkness to light--the kerygma, or basic gospel message of our faith.