Matthew 25:1 “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.

 

 

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I have been wanting to attempt a children’s book, and this assignment lent itself to such an endeavor. I have attempted to create a story for children ages six to eight which is faithful to the Matthean community, culturally appropriate today, and theologically relevant. I am not an artist, but would like to publish this eventually as part of a series, and for this reason I have not incorporated art but rather an idea for the illustrations on each page. I had no idea of the length of time a project such as this would take up, or I would have written a paper, except for Rachel, my daughter.

 I began this project by looking for a pericope unique to Matthew. Since the parable of the “Ten Virgins” had held my attention for some time, I started there. I then began to look into how to adapt Matthean theology into a story for children at this developmental stage. I wrestled with this aspect for a long time. I finally decided that the best way would be to incorporate, implicitly, the main character, Rachel, into the Matthean community. This has been shown on a few pages in the subtext. Furthermore, the number of aspects of Matthean theology had to be limited, due to the nature of the genre

Note Aug 20, 2012: Christ uses the wedding and feast, a male/female relationship, as a simile pertaining to the kingdom of heaven. There was no relationship in that day, and may still be no relationship which reaches the level of connectedness, support, love, life, beauty, fruitfulness to meet the needs of the metaphor Christ was building for the relationship between the church and Christ. Male members of the church have as many obstacles to accepting this simile as female members. Men are represented by the virgins in the same way as women.