Family home evening is often an enjoyable occurrence in the Irvine household. We have fun singing, playing games, and having a gospel-oriented lesson. Not many of our family home evenings, are very memorable -- except for one lesson we had a year or so ago, which will always burn brightly in the history of our experiences.
The lesson that night was about the importance of scripture study and was based on a chapter in the manual Teachings of the Prophet Spencer W. Kimball. In this chapter there was an entire page of comments by President Kimball about the story of King Josiah in the book of Second Kings in the Old Testament. President Kimball expressed a love and appreciation for this scriptural account because it tells of how King Josiah rediscovered the scriptures and rejoiced in having the word of the Lord to live by.
As I was giving the main body of the lesson, I decided to delegate part to my husband, Steve, and asked him to tell King Josiah’s story. Without reading the exact account in the scriptures, I opened the Bible to Second Kings for Steve and then left him to read and decide how to tell the story in his own way.
When I turned the time over to Steve during the lesson for his story he began by having the children draw pictures of idols. Apparently idol worship was a major problem during the days of King Josiah.
“What is this about?” I thought. I was surprised; this did not seem to fit well with what President Kimball had described, but I let Steve carry on without interrupting him. Our three children were happily drawing and paying close attention. “This will all tie in eventually,” I guessed.
The idols, once drawn, were cut out and then taped onto a “temple” Steve had built out of Lincoln Logs and a cookie sheet wrapped in tinfoil. He told the children about how King Josiah rid the temple of idols and idol worship by having the wicked priests put to death and the bones of other sinful priests dug up and burned. For this part Steve had placed paper cut outs of bones in a pie tin with dry brownie mix. He had the children dig the bones out of the “dirt” and place them on the cookie sheet.
Again, the kids were happily participating and loved licking their fingers after this fun exercise, but I was beginning to wonder where this was all going. Especially when Steve pulled out the lighter fluid.
Once the bones were on the cookie sheet, Steve dumped lighter fluid on them and lit a match.
“Now, although Daddy is using matches in the house, you kids know you should never play with matches, right? Especially in the house, okay?” Steve asked. With eyes like saucers, three little heads bobbed their heads up and down nodding their agreement. After this little warning Steve then dropped the match, setting the “bones” of the wicked priests on fire.
The pyrotechnics rose up at least three feet into the air and the faces of our children shone of complete shock and amazement in the light of the flames. The fire did not last long with such little fuel, but it created a surprising amount of black smoke and took only a few seconds before the fire alarm went off. The screeching was so loud we had to plug our ears.
After the alarm was turned off I continued to wonder about this extraordinary story. It was seemingly nothing like the account discussed by President Kimball. I asked my husband, “What about how King Josiah recovered the scriptures?”
“Oh yes,” Steve said, “That happened, too. While rebuilding the temple Josiah found the scriptures and was really happy about that.”
I do not remember how I ended the lesson—I am sure none of us do. But we will all remember the story of King Josiah and the memorable family home evening story we had that night.
Enjoy the video below and discover more about Rebecca's new book, Family Home Evening Adventures.
© Anne Bradshaw
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