How well does Mother Maryanna know her Psalms?
As it turns out, really well and in record time.
As we finished up our Summer in the Psalms for the Sunday school hour, our middle schoolers put Mother Maryanna to the test Aug. 30 by playing the Headbanz game. The game works like this: Maryanna+ placed a notecard on her forehead with the number of a Psalm written on it that faced the girls.
From there, the girls gave clues to see how quickly she could identify the psalm.
The girls gave great clues. Here’s a sampling: “Oh dear,” is what one of the girls said when she saw Maryanna+ put up Psalm 42.
Another: This psalm is spoken at funerals: a reference to Psalm 23.
The one clue that prompted the quickest response from Maryanna+ was “VBS.” In a record time of 2.65 seconds, Maryanna+ said Psalm 8, which uses the word “majestic,” which, of course, was the theme of All Saints’ Vacation Bible School this summer.
The score sheet is shown below, with the psalm on the left and how much time it took Maryanna+ to answer on the right (My apologies for my poor penmanship.) The clues were so good that Maryanna+ got eight of the nine psalms in under a minute.
Here are two other highlights from the girls’ time with Mother Maryanna during the middle-school hour:
Highlight No. 1: Straight from the heart
Maryanna+ shared with us what certain psalms meant to her growing up and how they helped her. Suffice to say, she had the girls’ full attention. It was powerful, heartfelt, and relatable. She said she didn't intend to turn her talk into a 15-minute sermon, but it would make a good one.
She finished talking about Psalm 27, verse 13, which says: “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” meaning that this applies to us now, not just in heaven.
The air felt like it got sucked out of the room when she said that.
Highlight No. 2: Really?
To get things started, we did a quick quiz to test the girls on a general overview of the psalms. They did well there too and did not fall for any of the trick questions.
In fact, in the true/false portion, they responded with abject disgust that something so wrong could be considered true. No fooling any of them.
Lots of laughter. Lots of fun. And lots of wonderful fellowship.
Thank you to all — David Fawcett and Heidi Reichert, Middle-School co-leaders