At the end of his song “These Days” the prophet Jackson Browne sings, “Don’t confront me with my failures; I had not forgotten them.” Preach it, Brother Jackson! I haven’t forgotten mine, either.

Verse 5 of the twenty-third Psalm speaks about the overflowing cup that God gives and this craft is a way of exploring and thanking God for His many gifts. Each creation will be unique!

It may be tempting to get lost in the maze of end-times teachings that often accompany a text like this. For you and your class, it may be just as easy to dismiss the entire thing as irrelevant speculations with no clear application to the world in which Christians live.

Do you have a baptism story? I do. I was ten, and I remember facing my baptism with a mixture of excitement and dread.