Promises, promises
Choosing to make a promise and dealing with broken promises.
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Choosing to make a promise and dealing with broken promises.
Discovering God is a resource offering practical ideas for informal services and events where the focus is on creating community and a sense of belonging, demonstrating that the church is available to all.
Underpinning the materials is an intention to gather together and with God, sharing experiences and stories, and learning together by providing resources that give an opportunity to develop:
empathy – helping to understand others by listening to their stories
resilience – learning to trust in God, to have a sense of being valued and protected
self-awareness – developing a knowledge of ourselves, by asking questions, thinking and reflecting in order to grow
faithful living – a conscious intention about how we act in our daily routines, with eyes open to see where we need to do God’s work.
We urge leaders to act as facilitators, limiting time spent leading from the front, and encouraging people to participate and interact together in mixed age groups. The ideas will work in face to face gatherings, and with minimal adaptation for online use. Find out more.
Paul Northam is the Evangelisation Fieldworker for the Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, supporting individuals and parishes to share the ‘Joy of the Gospel’ with family, friends and strangers.
Here’s a way to introduce the theme in the context of our everyday lives.
Lord, our lives are made up of many broken promises,
which may have hurt us and others deeply.
Show us that these things are not who we are.
We have an identity which you promise us:
to be children of God.
Help us to trust that promise.
Amen.
Before you end, come together to revisit the theme of promises and to pray.
Thank you, Lord,
that you love and value us enough
to commit yourself to us.
Help us to take your promises seriously,
and to trust you for our present and future.
Amen.
You could keep the theme and exploration of making promises going, by sending out follow-up activities:
Linking the introductory activities to the theme and Bible passage.
The book of Deuteronomy looks back at the history of the people of Israel as God’s people – receiving God’s law and promises. Through this process, written down over hundreds of years, the people of Israel learn about what God is like. They learn whether God can be trusted, the nature of the plans God has for them, and what God is willing to do in order to keep them together and keep them close. But much of the story is experienced through struggle and suffering: God’s promises are not bound by time, and are often fulfilled many hundreds or even thousands of years later.
Read the passage, then read the story below, to see that it’s often difficult to tell how God is fulfilling his promises.
There is a story of a farmer who had an old horse for tilling his fields. One day the horse escaped into the hills and, when all the farmer’s neighbours sympathised with the farmer’s bad luck, the farmer replied, ‘Good luck, bad luck, who knows?’
A week later, the horse returned with a herd of wild horses from the hills and this time, his neighbours congratulated the farmer on his good luck. The farmer responded by saying, ‘Good luck, bad luck, who knows?’
When the farmer’s son was attemping to tame one of the wild horses he fell off and broke his leg. Now everyone thought this was definitely bad luck, but still the farmer said, ‘Good luck, bad luck, who knows?’.
Some weeks later, the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied young man they found there. When they saw the farmer’s son had a broken leg they let him off. Now was that ‘Good luck, bad luck, who knows?’
Discuss how we deal with broken or seemingly unfulfilled promises. Do we automatically respond with ‘good luck’ or ‘bad luck’, or is there an opportunity to take a more open approach? How easy is it to rely on promises when we don’t have answers or an instant response?
The word ‘covenant’ is used for most promises in the Bible. It is a two-way agreement (entered into by choice) where both involved in the promise are bound to it. It often involves the sacrifice of valuable things (such as animals) to show the seriousness of the agreement. A covenant identifies the blessings that come with keeping the promise, but also lays out the consequences if the promise is broken.
We do not have a God who is distant, but a God who is passionately involved and interested in us and in our lives: past, present and future. However, the experience of God’s people is that God’s promises may not be fulfilled in ways we expect. Are we willing to believe God, to trust his promises and know that he will keep them in a way that is best for us? God’s promises are about a long term plan to care for his people.
Choose from these activities to help people explore the theme. We don’t include timings or age-differentiation as this is designed for all ages engaging together. Use the spiritual styles indicated by the coloured letters to help you plan, and cater for the different ways in which people connect with God.
Spiritual styles (as defined by Dave Csinos) key: Word, Emotion, Symbol, Action.
Find out more in Worship and learning support.
The artist says this image is about ‘the sour feeling you get when you’ve found out that someone has broken a promise to you’.
Play the two truths and a lie game. Each person tells the group two facts and one lie about themselves. Take a vote to see whether the group can detect the lie. How easy/difficult was it to uncover the truth? Does it make a difference how well you know that person?
In the story of Noah, a rainbow appears after the flood as a sign of God’s promise to save Noah and the ark. It’s still a reminder that God keeps promises, even when we don’t see or understand them. Write or draw about a promise you feel hasn’t been answered in the way you expected. Then paint or create a rainbow over the top as a reminder to trust God’s promises, even when it’s difficult.
In response to the pandemic, some people proposed a ‘Great reset’ to change our behaviour and priorities for the benefit of society and the environment. What could you ‘reset’ in your life, to renew your priorities, e.g. with friendships, money, work, family, the environment? Or make a promise to start/change/stop a particular behavior? Who can help you to keep these promises?
Provide play figures or stick people sketches to use, in pairs or individually, to play out a scenario between two people of a promise made and kept, or made and broken. It can be a real or hoped for situation. They don’t have to share out loud what their scenario is about, but they use the opportunity to explore promises – and how they feel about them.