Family Devotional - Loving Our Neighbor

Tonight we had a family devotional about what it means to "love our neighbor." For the text, I used the parable of "The Good Samaritan" in Luke 10:25-37. We didn't use "Samaritan," "scribe," "priest," or "teacher of the law." To illustrate the story and to make it appear more real, we used some of Keisha's Barbie dolls (I think she has maybe 10 of them now, but this is not the time to go into the "Naked Barbie Woodstock" that our house sometimes becomes.):

She hasn't given all the dolls names, so I told her we would give two of the ones we were using temporary names. She, at first, had a problem with this. I assured her that we were only using our imagination and that she could name the dolls whatever she wanted, even if it was at a later date.

For the person who was beaten and robbed, we chose one of Keisha's newer dolls, named Chelsea. We chose one of her younger dolls, whom we named Ruth, to be a girl who, although she goes to Chelsea's school, doesn't want to be her friend. We had a Ken doll, who was fortunately wearing shorts, to be a jock-type who thought he was too good-looking to help Chelsea.

Keisha also has a Fisher Price man, who we chose to be the "Samaritan;" i.e., the one who does what is right in the story, and we named him John. John is much smaller than the other dolls, and we let him have the pink Barbie car for the purpose of our story. Also, John lives on the other side of town and goes to a completely different school. John is also black.

For the "bandits," Mom and Jennie used about four of Keisha's other Barbies, and their job was to beat Chelsea up, tousle her hair, and steal her coat, shoes, and purse. They did a fine job.

The expression on Keisha's face after the mugging and after Ken and Ruth ignored Chelsea was priceless. The concern, the empathy. It was great.

Then we brought out John, in his pink Barbie-mobile. Here he was, in a hurry himself to get home because he had school the next day, and he pulled over to see what had happened to Chelsea. He even helped her into his car, even though she was about twice his size! Then he drove her to the hospital, gave the ER doctor a dime (the first coin I found in my pocket), and told the ER doctor to take care of her. If there was any additional cost, he'd be by tomorrow to take care of it.

After this drama, I took Ruth, Ken, and John. I sat them down in front of Keisha, and I asked her which one was more like a friend? She rightly pointed to John.

Update, 30 Jul 2003: You might appreciate Mom's version, too.