Family Faith and Fun Fridays: The Great Rescue (Why Jesus Even Loves Crabby Apples!)

Are you ready for some family fun? We’d love to have you join us as we seek to fan the flames of faith and let the Word of Christ have the run of our house!

This time of year I just can’t resist the lure of good-old-fashioned autumn fun. So on a warm evening not long ago, I decided to use a silly game of bobbing for apples to teach my young ones a simple lesson about Jesus’ impartial love. 

Though bobbing for apples in the mud is hands-down my all-time favorite family faith lesson, this cleaner version was still a hit. 

The point I wanted to drive home with our “apple rescue” was that Jesus came to rescue EVERYONE…. not just the “good guys,” not just the “sweet girls,” but EVERYONE created in His image. (That’s the whole world, of course!)

According to the Bible,  we are all “sinners who fall short of the glory of God”
(Romans 3:23). 

None of us can earn Christ’s love by being nice or cheerful or generous. 

Nor can we lose His love by being rude or crabby or mean. 

That’s the beauty and the hard-to-grasp-mystery of Agape

To help the kids understand that Jesus loves everyone, I drew a variety of faces on a dozen apples.

Using a Sharpie, I scribbled crabby faces and mean faces; happy smiles and laughing mouths. 

I drew dialogue bubbles right on the apples, I wrote grumpy messages like- “Get out of my way,” and sweet messages like-
“I love you.” 

Then I lined up all the apples and let the kids take a good look at our “personalities.” 

Just for fun, before we tossed the apples into our big bucket of water, we named each one…

Cranky Connie, Peaceful Patty, Angry Arnold, Sweet Steven, Hopeful Hank, Kind Katie

You get the idea. 

Before we began our bobbing adventure,  I reminded my children of God’s “Big Story”— 

*God created people in His own image, but when sin came into the world (all because of one woman and an apple), God’s children were separated from Him. 

*They were tossed into a world of sin and they were lost without Him. 

*Since God’s kids couldn’t reach Him (and they certainly couldn’t save themselves), God would have to reach down from Heaven and rescue His fallen children.

At that point, we tossed all of our apples into a big bucket filled with water.

Then I asked, “So how did God rescue His children?”

The answer: He sent His son Jesus to be our rescuer (John 3:16).

Next,  I invited each of my children to do what Jesus did, to bend down and “rescue” an apple.

When Hannah came up with Cranky Connie in her mouth, I said, “Oh, you rescued a crabby one. Do you want to toss it back and try again?”

Hannah looked at the crabby face she’d just caught and said, “I guess if I’m gonna be like Jesus, I’d better just keep old Connie. Even if she does refuse to smile.”

We repeated the process with the other kids, and Josh even talked his big brother into taking a break from Algebra homework to join us in the fun.

Each time a child retrieved an apple from the bucket, we discussed how Jesus came to save all kinds of people, not just the smiling ones. 

No one was allowed to toss an apple back, even if the apple had rude messages scrawled across it, like “Leave me alone to rot in peace!”

I asked what would have happened to the church if Jesus had decided only to rescue people who were kind all the time, or if He had chosen to die only for people who were always grateful.

Josh looked at me with incredulous eyes and said, “Well, that would have been easy. I don’t think Jesus would have had anybody to save…
Guess He wouldn’t have had to die on the cross!”

And Luke added, “Which means we wouldn’t have a church today!”

That’s when I pulled out my Bible and read Romans 5:7-8

“It is unusual for anyone to die for a godly person. Maybe someone would be willing to die for a good person.  But here is how God has shown his love for us. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

Once we’d retrieved all of the apples, we lined them up and studied their varied faces. I asked the kids if they had ever been a Cranky Connie or an Angry Arnold. 

I admitted that I certainly have been. 

But Jesus loves me anyway. 

And He chose to save me when I was a sinning Susan (long before I’d turned into a Hopeful Harriet).

We ended our simple lesson by reading about Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10, and agreeing to memorize the last line of that familiar story of grace: 

  “For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.” Luke 19:10

Then, we gathered our cranky and happy, mean and merry apples and we went inside to lather them all in melted caramel, the perfect way to celebrate the sweet, sweet, joy of our salvation!