We’re coming to the end of our study. One of our last exercises is to take what we have learned and turn it into our own paraphrase of the psalm.
Assignment: Pray for God’s help as you seek to recall all that you have learned over the past month. Then take out your notebook and pen, and your marked Bible or handout. You may also want to go to the Doorposts blog and click on “Psalm 103 Study” in the upper menu bar. This will give you easy access to all the lessons we have completed.
Using your notes, your highlighted text, commentaries you appreciated, and the instructions and comments from the assignments, write your own paraphrase of Psalm 103. Incorporate as much of what you have learned as you can into this paraphrase. This is an assignment to help us pull together everything we’ve been learning.
Take your time. If you’re working with short time periods, this may take a few days to finish. (Maybe your husband or a friend could watch the children for you for an hour or so, so that you can really focus on putting this together, or perhaps you could reserve the children’s nap time for working on this assignment.) Don’t move on to the next lesson until you have finished. But don’t forget to do Day 30, because it’s an important one, too.
For those of you who are interested, we will be rerunning a previous study on our Facebook group all through the month of December. (Our next new study will be begin on March 1, 2015.) If you didn’t study 1 John 3 with us this past March, and you would like to study along with other women, make sure you have joined the Busy Mamas Bible Study Facebook group. Starting this Sunday evening, I will post a link to the next day’s assignment each night. You can interact with other women who are doing the same study. You will be able to post questions and comments, share prayer requests, and share helpful resources, just like we do while we are running a new study.
(This coming Monday, you will still receive an email with the last lesson of this study on Psalm 103. So you’ll have to double up, if you are starting the 1 John study on the same day. But the first lesson of 1 John shouldn’t take you too long.)
For your children:
Today is treasure hunt day!
- Gather all your materials, or print them out now if you didn’t do that yesterday.
- Hide your cut-out slips of paper in the appropriate places (see instructions on the printouts).
- Then start reciting the psalm together. Stop the children when they reach a word that has been left blank in the printout of the psalm. Tell them that this a clue to direct them to a piece of paper they need to bring back to you. Give them some extra help if they have trouble figuring out where to look, based on the clue.
If you haven’t fully memorized the psalm, just read it aloud from the printout, and pause when you reach the blanks, letting the children provide the missing words.
- Keep following the instructions that are given with the printouts until you have found all the pieces of paper, reassembled them in order, and recited the psalm one more time. Be sure to point out that the words on all those pieces of paper are descriptions of what God is and what He has done, based on Psalm 103. You could even do this as they bring each word to you during the hunt.
- When you have finished, give the children your clue that sends them to their prize. Have fun!