Rebecca S. Ramsey's Blog, page 22

Knowing Jesus in a New Way 3: Known in Doubt

Welcome to Knowing Jesus in a New Way 3: Known in Doubt, our lesson for May 12.

Are you as captured as I am by Thomas’s expression on the story tile for this week? He looks so worn and burdened by his doubt, wanting to believe, yet in such need of seeing the wounds for himself.

I love the way the Godly Play script tells the story from Luke 24:36-43 and John 20:19-29. It describes the mood of the group of disciples gathered-with the doors shut, afraid for their lives. And then suddenly from within the group someone says, “Peace be with you,” and they realize it is Jesus.

They think he’s a ghost but then he eats a piece of fish. He wishes them peace again and he’s gone. Thomas comes to the group and hears the story of what happened but can’t believe. I like that the script does not find fault with this. “And why wouldn’t he doubt? Their minds were stretching, stretching to be big enough to know Jesus in this new way.”

Then, eight days later, the disciples are again in a locked room and Jesus appears, this time with Thomas present. Thomas doesn’t have to ask. Jesus approaches him and shows him the scars, inviting him, “Touch me.” Of course he falls on his knees. When Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe,” goosebumps rise on my arm. Yours too?

I bet children will identify with Thomas, particularly the older ones. They’ve been told so many things and have been disappointed to find out that they were duped. Proof makes belief so much easier. Older children might like to talk about belief and doubt. We shouldn’t be afraid to share our own experiences and hear theirs.

For younger children, this is a great story to have in their back pocket, so that when times of doubt and questions do arise when they’re older, they remember one who loved Jesus and whom Jesus loved who experienced the same feelings.

So, how do we help the children process the story?

If you are in a classroom where all the materials are near available to the children, I hope you’ll consider going along with the Godly Play script and letting the children gather items that help tell the story. It will be interesting to see the connections they make.



Here are our wondering questions for the lesson:

1. I wonder what is your favorite part of the story.

2. I wonder what the disciples thought when Jesus appeared to them in the locked room.

3. I wonder why Thomas needed to touch Jesus’ wounds.

4. I wonder what Thomas thought when Jesus appeared and came up to Thomas and said, “Touch me.”

5. I wonder if  you’ve ever had doubts about anything. I wonder how that feels.

6. I wonder what we can do when we have doubts about believing.



Some Thoughts on Our Gift to God Time:

How can we help the children to re-live this story? Here are a few ideas:

1. Retelling the story through art or drama

a) Kids could act out the story in your classroom. Make it dramatic. Shut the doors. Do the acting out in candlelight. Each child could play a part. The camera in the drawer in the hallway can videotape, if you want to do that.

b) Kids could draw the scenes of the story. The first appearance of Jesus. His eating of a piece of fish. Thomas’s skepticism of the story. Then Jesus’ appearance to Thomas and his touching Jesus. This could be done with markers or paint or three dimensionally with clay. It could be a class project on a mural or done individually.

c) There is also a craft ideas for responding to this story with art here .

2. Digging into the theme of the story of believing without seeing.

a) Children could make a banner for the classroom or a bulletin board that says, “Blessed are those that do not see, but still believe. John 20:29”-or whatever verse or message they pick that they feel tells the story. What illustrations would they want to decorate it with? I’m sure they’d have ideas.

b) Kids could make an illustrated list of ways to handle their doubt. What do they do when they doubt? Read the Bible? Talk to their parents? Talk with their teachers? Pray? Think hard about it? Or they could illustrate the statement: I can ask God for help with my doubt.

c)Children could discuss what faith really is and illustrate “What faith in Jesus means to me.” or make an “I Believe” door hanger or sign and decorate it however they like-with stickers or sequins or markers. We have some foam stickers in the game room on the craft table if you want to use them.

Check out my Pinterest page on this story here. One kind of thing that I pinned several times was the idea of using watercolors on a page from the Bible to illustrate a verse from the story. (Like Blessed are those who haven’t seen and yet believe. John 20:29.) We have some old Bibles that I’ll put out that you can take apart and use for this purpose. It might be nice to glue them on mat board when the watercolors are done and dry. I’ll put the mat board on the cart as well.

Enjoy the story!

Knowing Jesus in a New Way 2: Known in the Breaking of the Bread

Welcome to Knowing Jesus in a New Way 2: Known in the Breaking of the Bread, our lesson for May 5.

What a remarkable story from Luke 24:13-35! Two followers of Jesus (Cleopas and another unnamed) are walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, talking about what had just happened to Jesus. They meet a stranger on the road who asks them what they are discussing. The stranger is Jesus, but the men don’t recognize him. The two are speechless until Cleopas says, “Are you the only person who doesn’t know?” Jesus then asks him to explain, and Cleopas says that they are talking about Jesus of Nazareth, “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him;  but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” Then he adds that some women went to the tomb and couldn’t find his body and came back with stories of seeing angels who told them that he was alive.

The stranger calls them foolish and slow and says, “Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things before entering his glory?” He explains what was said by Moses and the prophets about Jesus in all the scriptures. Then, as they near the village, the men ask the stranger (Jesus) to stay with them. As they settle down to eat together, Jesus takes the bread, says the blessing, breaks the bread and hands it to them, and suddenly they recognize who he is. At that moment, Jesus disappears from their sight. They say to each other, “Wasn’t it like a fire burning in us when he talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?” Of course they rush back to Jerusalem to tell the 11 disciples. 

How moving! The children are sure to be amazed with this scripture. 

Be sure to check out the wording with which the Godly Play script shares these verses. It’s beautiful.


So, how do we help the children process this story?

If you are in a classroom where all the materials are near available to the children, I hope you’ll consider going along with the Godly Play script and letting the children gather items that help tell the story. It will be interesting to see the connections they make.Here are some wondering questions for this lesson:

1. I wonder what your favorite part of today’s story is.

2. I wonder what the most important part of today’s story is.

3. I wonder what God is trying to teach us with this story.

4. The stranger talked to them about how the Jewish people had been trapped in so many ways and that prophets said a little child would lead the people out of being trapped. I wonder how Jesus helped the people from being trapped. 

Some Thoughts on Our Gift to God Time:

How can we help the children to re-live this story? Here are a few ideas:

1. This one is my favorite… Why not literally walk through the story with the children? If the weather is  good, I think it would be great to take a walk around the church, and as you walk, ask the children what the men must have said to each other, being so confused and scared and disappointed with what had happened. Help them imagine encountering a stranger. (You could even have one of the teachers play that role!)  You don’t have to talk about the story the entire walk, but physically walking and talking about it to some degree helps the children imagine it and remember it.When you return to the classroom, why not have bread and juice waiting and sit down and share what it must have been like to recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread–and then have him vanish! I bet if the children walk through this experience, they won’t forget it!

2. Act out the story in the classroom. Take photos!

3. Illustrate the segments of the different parts of the story:

a)the two men walking, scared and confused,
b)the encounter with the stranger
c)what the stranger said, that a little child would come to lead the people and that someone would suffer and die so that we could really be alive

d) the meal at the inn

e) Jesus vanishing

f) the two followers rushing back to tell the disciples

4. Need other ideas? There’s a whole bunch here, if you’re a member of this organization. And my Pinterest site is here. [image error]

Easter Butterflies

This children’s sermon was written for Easter 2019.

Happy Easter! Today is the biggest day of the year, when we celebrate that God’s love is the greatest, the strongest power of all!

We use all kinds of symbols as we celebrate Easter- like eggs, the cross, and lilies but I want to talk about my favorite, and it’s in this bag. It’s also on the Come Unto Me window and in our Easter window and in this box on my lap! Can you guess what it is? It’s a butterfly! This one I found in my garden after it had finished it’s beautiful life. I keep it in a special box because it’s a treasure to me. I’ve got a paper one* for each of you, which I’ll give you at the end of our service, so that you can take your time in picking one out. (Ask acolyte to go get the basket and show children.)

The butterfly is a beautiful symbol of Easter.  I wonder why you think that is. What is it about a butterfly that reminds you of the Easter story?

Our children shared wonderful ideas! One said that butterflies have different stages of their lives, just like Jesus did, while he walked on earth and then went to heaven with God. Another said that if you take the wings off a butterfly and put them together, you make a heart. And another said that the chrysalis is kind of like a tomb, that the butterfly- or Jesus- comes out of! I let the children share their thoughts and brought them back to where we were going.

Yes, when it’s in the chrysalis or cocoon, it looks like it’s dead. Forgotten. Over. But is it? Sounds like Easter to me!

Inside, important changes have begun. It’s TRANSFORMING- changing form.

Jesus transformed, but he also helped others transform and helps us today too.

Now of course we all will transform when our life on earth is over and we live forever with God. But maybe one big thing Jesus did in his life and even as he died and came alive again, was to show us NOW how transform now into the person that God dreams for us to be.

Even when the world did the worst to Jesus, he refused to take revenge or run away. He stood up for love, even on the cross, loving the men beside him and the people who put him there. When he died, like a butterfly he transformed, showing us again we can transform too. I wonder what kind of people you and I will become if we keep transforming with Jesus’s help. It will be fun to see.

I’ll have one of these butterflies for each of you at the end of the service in the narthex. So come and find me and get yours, okay?

Let’s pray: Dear God, thank you for Jesus and your love, the greatest power in the world. Help us keep stand up for love, transforming into the people you made us to be. We love you, God. Amen.

 

 

*I found the butterflies on Amazon.

Knowing Jesus in a New Way 1: Known in Absence

Welcome to Knowing Jesus in a New Way 1: Known in Absence, our lesson for April 28.

This week’s story always gives me goosebumps-especially the moment when Jesus calls Mary’s name and she recognizes him. It’s hard to think of a story that would be more full of suspense and fear and joy, and the script for this Godly Play lesson does such a great job of sharing all of that with the children. I’m so glad that we don’t have to cram all of the after-Easter stories into Easter Sunday! It’s a luxury to be able to enjoy them and study them over several weeks.

The script is shared in the book that comes in the basket with your story tiles. This series is told much like the Easter series, with each lesson shared in a weekly tile, presented in sequence. The book suggests that after the story is shared, that you give the children time to find something among your Godly Play materials that helps further tell/illustrate the story. I hope that if you have the materials out in your room that you’ll do that. I’ll also include wondering questions for you for each week.

Here are the wondering questions for this week. Thank you so much for taking time to jot down responses so that we can share them with the parents.They have shared that they find it meaningful and enjoy feeling connected to what happens in class.

Wondering Questions:

1. I wonder what your favorite part of today’s story is.

2. I wonder what the most important part of today’s story is.

3. I wonder if there are any parts of the story we could take away and still have everything we need.

4. I wonder if there are ways we can learn about Jesus even though  he’s not here with us. I wonder what those ways might be.

5. I wonder what God is trying to teach us with this story about loving Jesus even when we’re not with him.

Gift to God Response Time Ideas:

There are a couple different ways children can respond to the story: either by (1)retelling it through art with the ideas below, or (2) by exploring ways in which they can know Jesus in his physical absence.

(1) Retelling the story of the empty tomb through art.

Children may want to brainstorm how they might represent the empty tomb story with their own ideas. Could they make a cave with clay, and add some strips of linen to the inside, with a large stone rolled away? Could they build the tomb with Lego or Lincoln Logs (feel free to help yourselves to the materials in the game room.) Or make it out of paper plates?

Could they make the people in the story: the three Marys, Peter and John, Jesus as the gardener?  Could they act out the story for the class using the materials they made? If they choose to do this, please do take photos!

Or maybe they’d like to paint the story or draw it. You could also make the cave as shown here orhere  

or here.  

Or if you’re in the mood to cook, why make Resurrection Rolls? They turn out sort of like popovers-hollow in the middle like a cave. The recipe is here. You can use the oven in the parlor or make them ahead at home.



2) Exploring ways in which they can know Jesus in his physical absence

Hopefully the children will share ideas during the wondering questions of how they can know Jesus even though he’s not physically with us. They could work together to illustrate a mural / list of these ways, including reading the Bible stories about Jesus, (ask the children to look through the Gospels and pick out their favorite ones and illustrate those,) listening to teachers and preaching about Jesus, praying, looking at artwork that artists have done about Jesus and his life, studying the Jewish faith that Jesus came from, learning about Jesus from the ways other Christians treat people. (This is a tricky one, isn’t it?)

I’m sure the children will think of even more ideas of ways to learn about Jesus.

Children could also explore how they “see” Jesus in other people. How can we act to make sure people see Jesus in us? This could be a great subject for a mural or class project.

I hope these ideas help!

Love, Becky

To See Or Not to See

I noticed him walking toward us as we headed down a street I didn’t know. Chicago is a big city, I’m a little directionally challenged, and it was just me and Sarah, my grown daughter. I wasn’t sure what this homeless man would do. Was he mentally ill?

As he came near and started asking us for money, I stared at the street in front of me, muttered a gruff, “Sorry, no,” and walked on.

“WHAT? YOU NOT GOING TO EVEN LOOK AT ME?” he said loudly, and an alarm went off inside my brain.

“The worst thing about being homeless,” a social worker friend once told me, “is that you feel unseen. That you become invisible. That people stop treating you as a human being. ”

I was one of those people.

“No,” I said, catching myself, immediately looking into his eyes. “I see you. I’m sorry.”

He nodded.

He was around Sarah’s age, and as he walked in step with us, he started rattling off a long list of people he knew who’d been mistreated because they lived on the streets or because they were black like him, and we listened. It was sad and it sounded true. Then he told us how he’d been arrested 75 times for nothing, and how the last time the police even took his ID, so now he’s in a real fix, but could we give him $100?”

“No, I don’t have $100 to give you,” Sarah said to him, “but I hear you.” He talked a while longer as we walked, and then he moved on to someone else.

Afterwards, I thought about my reaction, my instinct to pretend he wasn’t there. I was frightened of what he might do, so out of my fear I turned him invisible. Poof. I chose not to see him.

Some people would say you have to take care of yourself, that you shouldn’t be stupid and invite risk. Others would say this is exactly what we’re called to do as people of faith. That our constant challenge is to choose love over fear. Jesus never guaranteed safety when we stand up for love. It’s almost Easter, after all. Look at what happened to him.

Give yourself a break, I hear. Isn’t turning people invisible when we’re afraid just what humans do? It is what we do these days. We pretend the families trying to cross our borders aren’t people like us. That the children taken from their parents aren’t like our kids. That the families in Flint Michigan who don’t have safe drinking water don’t really exist or there can’t be that many of them. It can’t really be that bad, can it? That the people in Puerto Rico can’t still be suffering that much. We plug our ears and sing La la la la. Poof. You’re invisible!

We do it with things that disrupt our comfort like climate change (la la la la) and with anything that threatens ideas we’ve always held close. Take me, for example. I recently bought Short Stories by Jesus, a book written by Amy-Jill Levine, a self-described “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Christian divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt.” I thought it sounded interesting and challenging even, to get a view of how first century Christians really would have heard his parables. But once I started reading and realized how differently she presents these stories that Jesus told, ones I’ve lived my whole life knowing and loving- I started putting on the brakes. I’m all for learning new things, as long as they feather nicely into my own ideas (!) but when they turn everything upside down, maybe I don’t like having my ideas challenged. Poof! You’re invisible, Amy-Jill!

But still the book rests on my table, calling to me. I will read it and learn. Then I’ll decide what to do with it. But I’ll admit it. I’m a little disappointed that she’s not confirming what I always believed.

It’s much easier to stay comfortable, isn’t it? Darn you, Jesus, for calling us to lives of truth and love, not comfort. In order to love, I guess first we have to take a hard look. We have to see what’s in front of us.

Jesus saw people, the outcasts, the ones on the edge, over the edge, in the shadows. The ones whom others turned invisible. He saw them all and loved them all and sought them out as treasured children of God. He even saw the persnickety know it alls, the religious jerks. There was a danger in what he did, putting himself out there to love, but he kept doing it, even on the cross, with the man hanging beside him, even to the people who put him there.

At the end of our stay in Chicago, we got on the Blue Line to the airport. A few seats up ahead of us sat a dirty man in tattered clothes, furiously fingering his backpack and several bags. As he got closer to his stop, I watched him take out a cardboard sign and get ready to get off the train. I stole a glance at the words scrawled in marker. HUNGRY Your kindness feeds me. Bless.

The cynic in me says, “You had fare for the subway? So this is your job?”

But the Christ lover reads his sign.

Kindness feeds. The world is hungry.

Bless.

 

*Thank you toJohn W. Iwanski for the flickr photo through Creative Commons

Faces of Easter 7: Celebrating the Risen Christ

Welcome to Faces of Easter VII: Celebrating the Risen Christ, our lesson for Easter Sunday, April 21.

What a beautiful and important lesson we have this Sunday: the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

I love how Godly Play presents this lesson, reminding children that the crucifixion side of the story cannot be pulled apart from the resurrection part, and that which looks like an ending is actually a beautiful beginning.

There are wondering questions at the end of the lesson with the script. I’ll have those in your room as well.

Don’t forget to allow time for your children to celebrate the resurrection by visiting the cross on the courtyard outside the sanctuary, where each child will have an opportunity to add a flower or two to the cross. Maybe the younger children can go at the beginning of Sunday school, and y’all can stagger your visits so everyone has time to enjoy the cross. If you like, you could even take the kids to the labyrinth, with instructions for them to pray their own Easter prayer as they walk it. If the kids have plenty of direction as to what they’re supposed to do (and if the weather is good) it might be a meaningful part of the morning!

We will have snacks in the game room before Sunday school, but you might want to share a special Easter snack with your kids (Hot cross buns or something Easter-y.) Just give me a clean receipt and I can make sure you’re reimbursed. Easter is definitely something that deserves a party!

The children may have their own ideas about how they’d like to explore the story and celebrate it through art. It would be wonderful if they wanted to work together as a class to make a gift to God. Maybe a mural of the stone rolled away, or of the two sides of this week’s story tile?

For more art response ideas, see my Pinterest page, here.

Thanks y’all! Happy Easter!

Much love, Becky

How Do We Show Jesus We Love Him?

Today’s Children’s Sermon was created to accompany a sermon based on the story of Jesus and the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane. How do we be a friend to God, to Jesus, through this Lenten season? 

Good morning girls and boys. One thing we’re talking about today during worship is God’s gift of friendship, so I brought something with me that reminds me of one of my friendships. It’s a coffee mug. Every Friday, my day off, I meet my friend Susie for coffee. It’s kind of the way we play. We have coffee and we talk about things that are important to us. She listens and gets excited about things I share, and I listen and get excited about things she shares. It’s what you do when you care about a friend. We’re there for each other when things are easy and fun- and when things are hard and difficult. Her friendship makes my life better!

So I’m wondering, what do you do with your friends? (Listen to children’s responses)

How does that make your life better? (Children respond.)

We have another friendship- that is with Jesus. It’s a different kind of friendship, since I can’t meet him at Grateful Brew for coffee. But it is a loving friendship. I would bet that you would say that Jesus is your friend too. I’m wondering how you show your love for Jesus or God. (Listen to children’s responses.)

It’s a good thing to think about as we get close to Easter. If Jesus is one of our friends, how are we showing him that we love him? What could we do?

If you would like to draw him a picture or write him a letter, I’d love to put them together in an Easter basket just for Jesus! I’ll have a basket in the lobby and we’ll get it ready!

Let’s pray: Dear God, thank you for our friends and the way they make our lives so rich! Thank you that you sent Jesus to be our friend too. Help us find ways to show him how much we love him. We love you God. Amen.

What Happens When You Eavesdrop on the Subway

I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.

Or maybe I did.

Either way, my Nosey Nancy self got herself a gift last week on vacation and my brain is still turning it over, examining it, chuckling over the wonder of it, and rationalizing my habit of bumping into things because I get too interested in observing people. (See! There are gifts that come with the bruises!)

A couple stops after I got on the metro, a mama and her two girls, ages maybe 4 and 8, stepped into the train. All the seats were taken, so they stood with me in the middle, holding onto the bar.

I couldn’t help but listen.

I love listening to kids because they’re fascinating and because in France my French is closer to theirs than to that of other human beings and they often speak slowly and use words that adults don’t use so much in common conversation that I still remember from our life there, like tu me fâches– you’re making me mad and ça suffit – that’s enough (which confuses my dog Rosie so much that she always stops whatever she’s doing, so it’s très helpful!) And I just find the sound of kids speaking French beautiful and entrancing. Want to see what I mean? Listen to this little girl here.

So back to my eavesdropping…

They got on the train and the littlest one was whining because she was tired and hungry and her maman had not picked her up a snack on the way and she wanted to sit down and there were no seats available and her legs WERE SO TIRED THAT THEY MIGHT FALL OFF HER BODY right there on the metro! The mama gently told her that it’s a busy time so the train was full of people but the next stop was a main one, so she was sure that seats would come open.

So I crossed my fingers for her as the train slowed for the next stop.

Sure enough, dozens of people poured out and there were two empty seats right by the doors! Her older sister grabbed one, and then just as  little tired girl was almost to it, a teenage boy wearing headphones popped through the subway doors right into the empty seat!

The girl let out a pitiful sob, melted into the subway floor, and started to cry.

“Now now,” the mommy said, standing her up.

“But that was my seat,” she said. “It was mine.”

“Sweetheart, no seat belongs to you. It’s perfectly normal what happened. There was an empty seat and he sat on it. Let’s play a game, why don’t we?”

“I don’t want to play a game. I want to sit in that seat.”

The subway stopped again and an old man in a beret got on and stood with us, holding the metal bar.

At the little girl’s quiet crying, the mom tried again. “Let’s play a game, why don’t we? At the next stop, what color will the benches be?”

“BLUE!” said the older sister, happily enjoying her subway seat.

“What color do you think, cherie?” Mommy asked the little sister.

“May I play?” asked the old man in the beret. Several other people looked up in surprise- I saw them- those rascals, pretending they weren’t eavesdropping too.

“Well of course, if you wish,” said the mom.

We all smiled at each other as the man rubbed his chin in thought. “I think orange,” said the man.

“And what about you?” Mommy asked the girl, stroking her hair.

“Red,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“Such anticipation!” said the old man. “I can hardly stand it!”

The little girl looked up at her mother, the corner of her mouth drawing into a smile.

The train slowed. Everyone in the train peered to look at the benches.

“Blue!” said the old man. “Very well done,” he said to the older daughter, tapping his cane on the floor of the train for emphasis.

“LET’S DO IT AGAIN!” the little girl piped up, grinning. “I’ll get it next time! It’s going to be red. I know it!”

I looked at the people in the seats. A half dozen adults were trying to keep their smiles to themselves.

The next stop was my stop. I’d have to get off the train.

Our car slowed and I saw them! Red seats, indeed! Hurray!

Maybe it takes a village to raise a child or maybe it doesn’t always, but it sure is more fun that way!

Blessings to you!

 

Thank you to Elvin for the flickr photo shared through Creative Commons!

Faces of Easter V: Remembering Jesus Healing and Sharing Parables

Welcome to Faces of Easter V: Remembering Jesus Healing and Sharing Parables, our lesson for April 7.

 As we get ready for Easter this week, we remember the work Jesus did as he traveled around, healing people and sharing parables. It’s a great chance to make clear to our children that being with people of all kinds, loving them, healing them of their physical and emotional wounds, and sharing truth through stories was the work that God sent Jesus to do–and still sends Jesus to do today. I look forward to hearing from the children ways that they can be like Jesus: how they can show their love for others, heal people who are hurting, and share God’s truth with others.

You may want to share more detail in this week’s lesson than what is written in the script. Because we are retelling all the parts of the Jesus story, sharing every tile that we’ve shared so far during Lent, the writer keeps the script very brief. As for me, I’d rather give very short summaries of the tiles shared in the previous weeks and spend a bigger chunk of time in the circle sharing the healing story and an example of a parable.

I’ve fleshed out the script for this purpose with a more detailed telling of Jesus healing the blind man and Jesus telling the Parable of the Friend at Night and will send you my version by email this week. Feel free to use it if you like.

If you haven’t yet given each child an opportunity at the end of the circle time to gather something from the Godly Play materials that is related to this week’s story and to share the relation that he/she sees, this week is the perfect opportunity to try it. Even if you also use the wondering questions, it could be an interesting and valuable part of the lesson. If you do, try to have an adult jot down their thoughts and ideas so that we can share them in the newsletter.

Since there are no wondering questions listed with the script, I’ll have the ones below ready in your rooms. Thanks so much for taking time to document their responses. Having a peek into their thoughts and ideas is such a gift to the parents–and to the rest of us!

Wondering Questions:

1. I wonder what was your favorite part of today’s story.

2. In the healing part of our story, wonder how the blind man felt and what he thought when Jesus first took him by the hand.

3. Jesus put his spit on the man’s eyes, and the man could see, but not well. Then Jesus put his hands on his eyes again and his sight was perfect. I wonder why it took Jesus two times.

I wonder what this might teach us about helping people.

4. We can’t heal people’s eyes by touching them, but I wonder how we can help people with their hurt bodies and hurt feelings.

5. We shared the story Jesus told called the Parable of the Friend at Night. In that story, I wonder who the friend is who has gone to bed.

I wonder who you are in the story.

I wonder what Jesus wanted us to know about praying.

6. We talked about the fact that Jesus’ work was to come close to people, especially the people no one else wanted to come close to. If Jesus came to do this today, I wonder what kind of people Jesus would want to spend time with.

Gift to God Time

There are many different directions the children can go in responding to this week’s time together. They could focus on retelling the healing story or the parable or both. Or they could extend this lesson by focusing on how we as Christians can participate in the healing of others and in telling truth and sharing God’s message.

Retelling today’s story:

1. Children could make 2 dimensional or 3 dimensional representations of the healing story or the parable story through drawing or painting it, making a mural, creating the scene in a diorama, making clay figures to act out the story, etc.

2. Children could work in a group or individually collecting healing stories of Jesus or parables Jesus told. How long a list could they make? Could you work together, giving groups of kids different gospels to scan, making a list on a piece of butcher paper? Maybe they could illustrate the list with a simple drawing beside each title. The Bibles in our Sunday school rooms have headings of each parable and healing story, making them easy to find. Do all the gospels tell the same stories? This would be good to investigate.

3. Children could be given the option of examining other parable stories in the parable boxes and retelling them to a partner. They might have to look these up in the Bible to make sure they remember the stories. We’d just need to be sure that they’re careful to keep all the materials together and separate from each other.

4. The children could even make a mini-booklet of parables, with one on each page and a simple illustration.

5. Children could make ornaments for our Jesus tree from the different healing and parable stories. How about a set of eyes for this week? Or a door from the parable? Or items from other parables and healing stories. There are some interesting ones here.

How we can help heal others:

 6. Children could make cards to help heal those who are sick or lonely. I’d be glad to pass these on to the ministers when they visit. When we’ve done this before we’ve had a great response. Cards really do make a difference!

If you like Pinterest, see here for more ideas the children could use as springboards. (Rather than copying them exactly, they could use them as inspiration!)

Enjoy!

Stepping into Paintings– Treasures I Found There

Do you know this chair? You may recognize it as Van Gogh’s, a chair with his pipe and tobacco on the seat, his distinctive signature on the box behind it. But when I look at it, I see a love story- for him and for me!

Well that’s dramatic, Becky.

It is! But it’s true. This painting is the first one I ever tried to copy myself, back when we lived in France and I spent weeks on it, picking it up whenever everybody had gone to bed or when the kids were at school and Sam was down for a nap. (Or more truthfully, since Sam hated naps, whenever I was so desperate to accomplish something that I let him wander around wreaking havoc as I painted!)

I’d paint and give up, paint some more and give up again, throwing my hands up and storming away. But then I’d return to it because I’m stubborn like that and because I knew I was learning — about painting and Van Gogh but also about myself.

I wrote in The Holy Eclair about how painting Van Gogh’s chair was an key part of my spiritual journey and transformation in France, and it took more than a chapter, so I won’t try to say it all here. I’ll just say that Van Gogh taught me to really look at whatever I’m painting or loving or trying to understand, not just with my eyes but with my heart, and that making mistakes gives a painting more layers, and that this depth makes it more real. How about that? Risking and making mistakes actually makes the work better! I could go on and on with what might sound like mumbo jumbo, but suffice it to say that this first exercise in painting helped me learn to accept my own mistakes and faults and to love myself and others better. It taught me how to hand out grace.

And at the same time as I was painting that chair and then other works of Van Gogh, I was reading his story. I learned how he started out relentlessly working to copy the masters, tearing up his paintings in a rage when they weren’t as perfect as he wanted, until finally he learned to give himself the grace not to fit himself into other people’s molds but to be completely Vincent Van Gogh. A perfectionist learning to hand out grace?  His world merged with mine. He’s a hero to me. A saint.

So when I heard that there was an amazing new Van Gogh exhibit going on at Les Baux de Provence where the paintings were projected onto enormous slabs of stone in a bauxite quarry and you could actually step into them as they moved around you- and that this was happening WHILE MY HUSBAND WAS IN FRANCE FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH (!!!!) I knew I had to take some vacation and see it for myself!

And so I did. And so I’m writing this blog post from my bed in a hotel room in Clermont Ferrand, still reeling from Saturday’s experience. Take a look here and see it for yourself. Their website footage is so much better than any of the video I tried to take.

We watched the program twice, taking in all the paintings we all know by heart- the sunflowers (which I grew up with as a copy hung in our kitchen …so many mornings of staring at those sunflowers while I ate my cereal!) the couple taking a nap by the bales of hay, the forlorn looking church, the irises, the postman, the starry night, the cafe on the terrace at night- and so many more. Todd and I let them all pour over us. And then something happened as we started to leave.

A little girl was standing on a slab of stone as we headed toward the exit. Her parents were taking pictures but she didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy examining the field she found herself in. I watched her tilt her head, as if to see if she could feel the wind in her ears.

And then the painting changed.

The crows began to fly overhead, and she stretched out her arms to catch them, to touch their tail feathers.

It was a beautiful thing, this little girl immersed in the world of the painting. Down below her in the real world were her mommy and daddy, but here were these birds and a hillside under her feet. She could imagine herself into both worlds, so why not reach for the birds?

The next morning, I had a similar experience.

I had wanted to go see the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, but it didn’t open until 10, so we walked the streets of Arles, taking in the beautiful sunshine. A coffee would help the time pass (who needs an excuse for a coffee?) so we stepped into a square where there were several cafes. And then I saw one that looked strangely familiar.

And no, I didn’t see the GREAT BIG SIGN IN FRONT OF THE TABLES that showed anyone walking by that this is the cafe of Terrasse du café le soir by Van Gogh. No, what I saw was the orangey- gold of the cafe walls and the art deco style entryway of the hotel across the street and the paneling of the shop next door which somehow I KNEW inside my brain. And then it hit me. I had spent days trying to get those details right when I copied Van Gogh’s painting of that very site!

I had stepped into this painting and not even known it.

The painting’s world and my world merged. I was inside the painting, almost 20 years after copying it. I had loved it as I had painted it, noticing all the lines and colors, the arcs of the cobblestones, the curlicues of the light poles, the lines of the shutters, the glowing light under the awning. As I looked hard at it, with both my eyes and my heart, it had become a part of me. Our worlds had merged and here they were years later, merged again.

One more story… (My posts aren’t usually this long, but VAN GOGH! And ARLES! And FRANCE!)

As I tried to calm down later last night, my husband snoring beside me, I thought back on something that happened the first few hours of our trip south Saturday and how it felt familiar to the whole worlds merging idea. We were stopping for lunch in a little town outside of Valence- nothing fancy- we just wanted salads in a little bistro.

It looked deserted but there was still a big chalkboard outside, listing their specials for the day, so we walked in. The bar was dark and small so we asked to be seated on the terrace out back. It was lovely to sit under a canopy of woody grapevines, near a handmade fountain with a quirky plastic hedgehog looking at us. Our young waiter was curious about our American accented French and said they normally don’t get foreigners but how exciting because he adores the states, especially Californie and Nevada. He wants to go to Las Vegas one day and also Los Angeles.

When he took our order, he rattled off all the salads they can make and then said in French, “but it’s easier to choose if you see it all written down.” Before we could stop him he ran back to the street, dragged in the enormous chalkboard, brought it down a flight of steps to the terrace and then to our table. After we ordered, Todd mentioned that he enjoys growing grapes, at which our waiter told us all about the 120-year-old vine we were sitting under and how it’s weeping right now as it gets ready to produce leaves and growth. To make sure we understood, he traced an imaginary tear down his cheek. How I love French people.

Lunch was delicious.

After a coffee for the road, (who needs an excuse for a coffee?) we went to the bar to pay. An old man on a stool listened as we made small talk with the owner, praising the delicious meal and the vines and the sunshine.

“Are you vacationing north or south?” asked the owner, and Todd explained where we were headed, adding that he’s been in Clermont Ferrand working for Michelin all month and that we used to live there years ago. The old man stood up and pulled a Michelin key chain out of his pocket to show us, and then the owner started talking all about how much he loves his Michelin tires and ASM rugby team (Association Sportive Montferrandaise was started by Michelin years ago) and how he cheered when they won the French Championship in 2010, in their 100th year as a club.

We chatted some more and then shook hands and wished each other well.

Merging worlds, I thought. All of us, the waiter, the owner, the old man, Todd and me, we all were eager to imagine ourselves into each other’s worlds, to believe that we weren’t so different, to seek out proof – the waiter’s love for Las Vegas and Californie, Todd’s vines, the old man’s key chain, the bistro owner’s love for ASM Rugby.

We belong to each other, whether we acknowledge it or not. Like the little girl reaching for the birds, like a  woman from South Carolina unwittingly walking into a painting she copied twenty years ago by a man who changed her life, why not embrace the merging, the oneness? We are all children of the same God in the same world. Any boundaries there are just ones we’ve drawn ourselves.

If we can imagine our worlds merging, why not reach for the birds?

Blessings to you all!

Love, Becky