Our classroom has a lava lamp that we put out each week while we're meeting. It's actually our second lava lamp because the first one was accidentally broken by a young man in the older youth group who just wanted to check it out one Sunday morning. We decided to re-create this case a little more creatively without the ZG kids knowing what was happening.
Earlier in the week, we stopped by the church and removed the lava lamp from the cabinet we keep it in. In it's place, we left the top cap piece to the lamp and two large pieces of broken glass. Now Kirsten gets to ZG early every week, before anyone else. She arranges the chairs for us and gets the lamp set up and plugged in. We knew that when she saw the broken glass and top piece to the lamp, she would freak. And freak she did! With nine girls in our group, we were sure there would be no shortage of drama for our trial!
When we arrived and Kirsten told of us her find, we acted shocked and even a little angry at what could have happened to our lamp. Hearing the commotion, Ms. Jennifer, our church's audio person who's there for practice every Wednesday night, came out from the sound booth and asked what had happened. We told her our lamp was missing and appeared broken. She then told us that she'd seen Josh, the older youth and culprit the first time around, in the kitchen earlier and even looking in our cabinet (which is also where we keep our snacks and drinks).
John went to get Josh from the youth room for "questioning". On the way over, Josh put several Band-Aids on his fingers and wet his shirt (evidence, you see). In our class, we asked Josh what happened and why he was in our cabinet. He defensively claimed he was there because one of the Pioneer Club teachers, Mrs. Lacie, asked him to come over and look for some glass bowls in the kitchen. He said that he dropped one and it broke and he swept it up. He said he never saw the lava lamp under the counter and didn't even know it was kept there. We asked him about his wet shirt and bandaged hands and he claimed the water was from the bathroom being out of paper towels and his hands were from the glass he cleaned up.
John walked Josh back to class and got Mrs. Lacie next. Mrs. Lacie told our class that she asked Josh to look in the food pantry, not the kitchen and that she had no idea why Josh would have gone to the kitchen and looked in the cabinets for glass bowls when it was water she asked him to look for.
After Mrs. Lacie left us, the debating began. It was great to just sit back and hear the kids brainstorm why or why not Josh could have broken our lamp and what he would have done with it afterwards. The kids even looked in the garbage cans in the kitchen to see if maybe he hid it there. Some kids were defenders of Josh, especially his Aunt Rachel, some were prosecutors, all were his jury and judge it seemed. Being the one who broke our first lamp, made Josh a very easy target. We made a list of the facts and evidence on the white board in the room and then came to the conclusion that someone else needed to be involved in our debate, be it Josh's parents or Pastor Billy. Things were getting serious now!
About this time, we tried to reel the kids back in a bit. We told them that we couldn't believe we'd wasted nearly our entire class on the mystery of the lava lamp and that we needed to get to our lesson for the night. We told them that our mock trial of Josh reminded us of the past week's sermon on judgment day. We discussed the day when each of us will stand before the ultimate Judge who will determine our eternal destiny....heaven or hell. God alone will be our Prosecutor, Defender, Jury, and Judge. And only if we have the assurance of Jesus Christ standing up to testify for us and on our behalf, can we be assured of heaven as our final destination.
We looked at Hebrews 9:27, Acts 17:30-31, Matthew 25:31-34 & 41, 2 Corinthians 5:10, 1 Corinthians 4:5, 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, Colossians 3:25, Romans 12:19-21. We discussed how these Scriptures pertained to us personally and even to how we had just sat in judgment of our brother Josh.
At that, we brought the hidden lava lamp into the classroom and the kids then realized that the whole drama had been a part of their class and learning after all. We then invited any kids who were not so sure of their salvation and eternal destination to see us to pray with them after club.
