The Feast Day of Saul's Conversion

The above Bible is The Gospel Story Bible.  Rowan received this story Bible for Christmas and overall I really like the parts we've read so far.  It isn't the best storytelling, but is accurate to scripture and the illustrations are interesting (all in the simple style above.)

I'm determined to celebrate more of the 'lesser feast days' this year.  I'm still figuring out what that should look like and would LOVE feedback from any of you who have traditions on any of these days.  In the past we've done a saint day some months and I put some thought into the meal and have a dessert.  But, if we are going to have feast days more often, I don't have the budget, time or the desire to add that many sweets.  There have to be other fun ways to celebrate these days.  I definitely want to base our 'feast' around the story, but am hoping to be slightly more creative as we go.

Last Saturday was the feast day of St. Peter's Confession, so we simply read that scripture after dinner and talked about it again before bed.

Today, the feast of Saul's Conversion.  After dinner I read the biblical account (Acts 9) and then read the story out of two different children's Bibles.  We've done this a couple times before, but I have been meaning to do it more often as Mr. 7 is very ready for this kind of exercise.   After the biblical account we read it out of The Bible for Children (lower left in photo below).  This children's Bible (with a few exceptions) sticks to the words of scripture pretty accurately and this story was well told.  Then we read the The Jesus Storybook Bible (upper left in photo below) which is always more imaginative in its telling of stories.  I don't mind a more imaginative telling, but do want the boys to learn to discern when something is imagined or a possible interpretation.  Both Rowan (4) and Jonah (7) had a lot of fun pointing out what Jones added to her telling of the story and I really wanted to talk to the boys about the 'sunday school myth' of Saul changing his name upon conversion.  It is possible that he changed his name to reflect his conversion, but I think it more likely that he simply started going by a greek version of Saul as he reached out to the gentiles.   Again, I don't have any problem entertaining the idea that maybe he changed his name to reflect his conversion, but I do think that it is best to be aware of when authors like Jones like to add lots of stuff to the story.  

*Note on photo above - The Children of God Storybook Bible is in the upper right hand corner of this photo.  We didn't read it tonight, but I read it when deciding what to read.  We have this Bible out of the library this week and I've enjoyed what we've read so far (Genesis and the prophets.)  The illustrations are done by lots of illustrators from around the world and are hit or miss (some I really like and others are pretty poor quality and/or cartoony, which I'm not crazy about.)  Jonah actually noted the different illustrations and had some great commentary on the various styles; that was a very fun discussion.
We ended up doing some pastel and watercolor after dinner with the younger boys at Isaac's request- the lower right is the quick piece I did while we painted (the boys painted monsters, knights and dragons.)