Kerplunk, collapsing and support

Do you remember the game Kerplunk? A set of sticks hold up some marbles in a tube and each player takes a turn to pull a stick out hoping that they won’t make any marbles fall as they do. My wife built a giant version for use at our church fun day and as you can see in the picture above we used it again as part of our church stall at a local fun day last Saturday. You can read more about the inspiration for this here.

We added a board with the question, ‘where does your support come from?’ People could write down on a piece of paper (shaped like a small Kerplunk stick) what it was that supported them and then stick it on the Kerplunk picture. The finished picture was designed to show that these things support us and hold up everything else in life. We expected some people to take part but the response was overwhelming to the point that the painted Kerplunk balls were completely covered (more support than things to cope with!) We explained to people that we believed that God is our support and that he gives us strength and help if we turn to him. We thanked people for what they had written and said that we would be giving thanks for all of those things in our service the next day.

During the service we started with a game of Kerplunk and explained that when our supports get taken away that eventually everything will collapse. We gave thanks for all the supports that people had written down at the fun day and we then added a third panel to the display board which asked ‘how does God support us?’ We sang about God being our loving father who wants to be involved in our lives and as we sang people had the opportunity to write down and stick up examples of how God supports them. It is great to know that God is at work in our lives in such practical and down to earth ways. Here are some of the answers:

What supports us in life?

How does God support us?