Materials
Wrap up several empty boxes in bright, attractive wrappers. Try to use boxes that look like things that are easily recognizable and that the group would enjoy.
Activity
1. Hold up the items one by one and ask the participants to try to guess what is in each package. Don’t let them touch the gifts. Then tell them they could win the prizes and find out if their guesses are correct.
2. Have a question and answer quiz game and award individuals with play money.
3. After all the money has been distributed to those answering the questions, hold an auction for the wrapped gifts. You might suggest that they can pool their money to buy an item together.
4. After all gifts have been auctioned off, allow everyone to open their gifts. Of course they will all be dissapointed that the boxes are empty.
5. At the end of the session have a reward for everyone.
Applications / debrief
1. We often spend a lot of time, money, and effort for things we think are going to be so wonderful and when we finally get them we still feel empty and disappointed like these empty boxes. Yet Jesus promises us a gift of eternal life. We don’t have enough money to pay for it, but he paid for it with his life on a Cross. That’s what Easter is about. Jesus paying the price so we could have eternal life. We can try to find meaning in life through all kinds of things, but we can only find meaning in God.
2. Ecclesiastes 2:1-24, Materialism, Our hearts desires
3. The disciples were disappointed when they discovered the empty tomb. But disappointment turned to joy when they discovered the Risen Savior. And everyone gets the same reward!
4. Blaise Pascal said that inside every man there is a god shaped vacuum that only God can fill. We can try to fill that void in our lives with many things, but only God will bring us contentment and happiness.
MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.