Rebecca S. Ramsey's Blog, page 28

What God Has Made Clean- Help from Harry the Dirty Dog

This children’s sermon was written to accompany a sermon based on Haggai 2:10-19 and Acts 10:9-11:18.

Good morning girls and boys! I brought a book to share with you today, a book that I love! Do you know it? It’s called, Harry the Dirty Dog, by Gene Zion, and someone may have read it to you when you were small. I love it because it feels like a parable to me- a story that someone made up, but has a BIG TRUTH in it that helps us understand God. The story doesn’t mention God at all, but I wonder if it says about what God is like and what humans are like. I’ll read it quickly and then I want to see what you think.

Read the book, or skim quickly, depending on time you have.

I have some questions for you:

I wonder how we’re like Harry.

If the story was true, I wonder if God would still know it was Harry.

Even though his own family didn’t know who he was inside, God knew who he was, who he could be.

God always knows who we are inside and loves us so much, no matter if we’re clean or get dirty, no matter if we keep doing things that make us seem different than the real us inside. God calls us to be our best selves in the world, just as God created us to be- but sometimes it takes God’s help-and a mighty big scrub brush!

Let’s pray: Dear God, thank you for loving us no matter what situations we get ourselves in. Help us as we try to be the kind of people you made us to be. We love you, God. Amen.

The Story of Jacob

Welcome to our lesson for September 2, The Story of Jacob, found in Genesis 25-33,35. (The script is found in the pink Enrichment Presentations for Fall book, p.44-50.)

What a perfect time to present this story. When we finished last week’s story, The Great Family, Isaac and Rebekah were married, Abraham died, and we shared that Isaac and Rebekah had children-who had children, who had children, etc. So who were their children? We can pick up right here with the Story of Jacob, ending with the formation of the 12 tribes of the Great Family, Israel.

Jacob’s story is so rich with topics that children will want to explore, like sibling relationships, fairness and trickery, making choices, the concept of a blessing, the idea of wrestling with God. Hopefully there will be plenty of time in your wondering time to hear their thoughts on these and to help them explore their own ideas.

Ideas for their Give a Gift to God Time
 1. Recreate some of the story materials so that the children can tell the story themselves at home.
A bowl can easily be made out of quick dry clay, a ladder could be made from popsickle sticks, veils from netting. Children can come up with their own ideas of how to make the objects if they have access to materials.

2. Act out the story!
Our children LOVE doing this. Why not break the story into scenes and let the children act them out? Simple props could be a bowl, the animal skin from the story basket, and netting for a veil (I’ll have some in the resource room.) I’ll have my camera ready to borrow to video if you like.

3. Make a Jacob’s ladder snack out of marshmallows, pretzels and marshmallow cream, as described hereYum!

 4. Teach the children how do to Jacob’s ladder with a piece of string, as shown in this video.



While you’re practicing, talk about what the dream meant.
See more ideas at my Pinterest page on the story of Jacob, here.

Enjoy!

Christmas Farm- A Story about Waiting on God

This children’s sermon was given not during the Christmas season, but during ordinary time, to accompany a sermon that had to do with waiting for God to do something beautiful. (I wish I could remember the scripture! I gave it a couple of years ago.)

Good morning, girls and boys. Today we’re talking a lot about patience. We’re talking about giving to God and then having the patience to wait so that God can have time to make something wonderful happen. So it’s the perfect time to say to you, Merry Christmas! What, hasn’t anyone wished you that lately?

I thought about Christmas and patience and waiting for God to make something wonderful happen when I reread this book this week. It’s Christmas Farm by Mary Lyn Ray. I’m not going to read the whole thing but I do want to tell you about it. It’s the story of Wilma, who has a sunflower garden but she wants to plant something else. What do you think she decides to grow? Christmas trees! So she orders sixty two dozen trees and asks her 5 year old neighbor Parker to help her.

The trees come and just like Parker, they’re 5 years old. They’re a foot tall. They plant them that summer. “Will they be ready for Christmas?” Parker asks. No. They needed growing time. Winter comes and then spring. They weeded around them. Wilma and Parker kept taking care of them, year after year. The trees grew and so did Parker. Some of the trees were lost- mice chewed their roots, moose cracked their branches, but most of them kept on growing. They grew and grew and grew.

Finally, when Parker turned ten, they knew the trees would be ready that Christmas. December came, and they sold trees and trees and trees. And then they chose their own.

Now read this last page: That night, across their yards, Christmas twinkled. Far away too, in rooms they never saw, in places they never knew, five hundred and sixty six trees that Wilma and Parker had grown wore lights and balls and tinsel in their branches- green balsam branches that smelled the sweet smell of Christmas. Back on the hill, the twenty nine trees that weren’t chosen began winter again. Parker told them they would grow tallest, for people who wanted tall trees next year. One Saturday night, Wilma and Parker filled out an order for eighty tree dozen new seedlings. Then they waited for Spring.

Wilma and Parker knew how to give and then wait for God to do something beautiful. We can learn to do the same.

 Let’s pray together: Dear God, thank you for all the beautiful things you do, when we give and wait, letting you do what you do. We love you God. Amen

God Is a Mother and I Have Proof- What I Saw at White Duck Taco Shop

I saw God yesterday.

I was sitting at a picnic table when it happened, eating a tikki masala chicken taco with a bunch of women ministers.

And to think I almost didn’t go!

I think they’ve been getting together for a year now, (the women, I mean– I assume God has been attending too) but my grandma duty kept me from going. That, and I wasn’t sure I belonged.

Do you ever worry about that? Belonging, that is?

I don’t have Reverend before my name, though it’s my life work and joy. I’ve thought about going back to school to remedy that, and I’ve fantasized about all the great stuff I would get to learn, but if I went back to school I know I’d either have to take a break from writing or from my job ministering to children and families, and I love both those things too much to give them up. So I guess I’ll stay Reverend-less. That’s okay. As far as I can tell, with me, God doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.

Anyway, back to seeing God…

So we women sat there together in the sunshine, and as a random yellow jacket buzzed around and teams of cicadas chirped at each other from all sides, as if we were in the middle of a cicada pep rally, I focused on the quiet sounds of these women talking about their lives. One woman who works at a homeless shelter shared how she LOVES those people, and another talked about how great hospice is but that she’s really having fun now, shepherding a congregation, doing counseling and making hospital visits. Another woman looked at her plate and said shyly that she wasn’t in a ministry position right now, that she was home with kids, at which we all said, THAT’S A MINISTRY IF I EVER HEARD OF ONE. A brand new grandma showed us pictures on her phone of her grand baby girl, and we all oohed and ahh-ed at her perfect little head and her dark, knowing eyes. My friend Kendra spooned her almost three year old a bite of watermelon, which Hattie took in her hands and picked off the shriveled bits of mint to flick on the ground, “It’s food for the bugs,” she said. Then, as Hattie climbed down off the bench to run around a little, Kendra told us that she was having a boy. “We learned it from a diagnostic blood test at eleven weeks. Can you believe it?”  As she explained that the lab can extract fetal cells from the mother’s sample and get all sorts of genetic information, I watched her unconsciously caressing her rounding belly. We all smiled and shook our heads in wonder.

I looked around the table at these women, these ministers, these nurturers of preschoolers and children and teens, of men and women (complete with their fears and hopes and anger and dreams,) of homeless people and patients in hospitals and the elderly, and I saw the truth. Of course God is a woman. God could be a man, too, I would think. But today, God was mostly a woman.

And God must be a mother, too. The women at that table showed me that. Take a needle to God’s arm, draw blood, and put it on a slide.  Look under the microscope and you’ll see all of us there, you and me, men and women, Her children, swimming around in what we think is our humdrum world. Going to work, cooking dinner, washing our socks, packing lunches and putting gas in our cars, trying to convince ourselves that we’re separate. That we live our own lives. Yes, but…

I love hanging out with people whose work it is to stand up and say, No. Not really! We’re not really separate. We’re not alone. God is there. God is HERE FOR YOU, AND SO AM I. I love these women (and men too) who show us God by sitting at our sides and whispering God’s courage into our ears, by walking beside us and handing us Kleenex, by listening and praying and listening some more. By challenging us and loving us and accepting us as God’s treasured children, no matter who we are or what we’ve done.

As our hour together began to close (there’s lot going on in God’s bloodstream, so we don’t dilly dally) I couldn’t help but notice Hattie in her pigtails, dancing in circles and singing up to the sky, taking breaks to scoop up pebbles to roll around in her hands and then scatter, watching how the light plays on them. I watched as she stopped to gently pick something up from under a tree. She brought it to her mother, cradling it in her hands.

“Oh,” Kendra said. “You brought me a dead cicada. Thank you, Hattie. It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

Hattie smiled at her mother and nodded, laid it gently on the bench, and went back to play.

I’m sure that Mother God beamed at the moment, this pigtailed mini-minister, just like her mommy, showing the world what it means to serve God, just by rejoicing being herself…feeding God’s bugs and dancing in Her sunshine, singing Her joy, rolling around Her pebbles as if they were gems (because aren’t they, so round and perfect?) cradling the living, treasuring the dead.  Accepting whatever God has created as beautiful and good.

I think that’s the kind of minister I want to be. Reverend or not.

 

*Thank you, Jack Guild for sharing your photo through flickr, through Creative Commons

 

Coming Alongside Each Other in Our Troubles- A Lesson from the Friends of Amos McGee

This children’s sermon was written to accompany a sermon based on Philippians 4:10-20.

Good morning, girls and boys! This week I met someone new. Do you know Amos McGee? Maybe you remember this book from when you were little. It’s written by Philip C. Stead and we have it in the media center. Every morning Amos McGee goes to his job at the city zoo…

(Begin reading the book. Read it completely or summarize it, depending on your time limitations.)

I wonder if you noticed that this book goes well with the scripture we read today. Did you pay attention to the scripture while it was read a few moments ago? Let me reread some of it, and as you hear it, listen for anything that might remind you of Amos and his friends at the zoo.

“God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies. I’m glad in God…happy that you’re again showing such strong concern for me. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am. I don’t mean that your help didn’t mean a lot to me- it did. It was a beautiful thing: that you came alongside me in my troubles.”

I wonder how this scripture reminds you of Amos McGee and his friends. (Allow children to respond.)

Did Amos and the animals enjoy the good things about each other? Did they focus on the good things they could do for each other? Did God help them work together? Did they come alongside each other in their troubles? And in the Bible story we heard in Sunday school today, who came alongside whom, for help?

It seems to me that this is exactly the generous kind of love God shows us– and wants us to show for each other.

Let’s pray: Dear God, thank you for friendship. Than you for reminders about how you love us and want us to love and care for each other. We love you, God. Amen.

The Great Family

Welcome to our lesson for August 26, The Great Family, found in Genesis 12-15, 24. (Script is found in the yellow Fall book, p.57-64.)

What a meaningful lesson, to learn that we are all descendants of God’s great family, and that God is with us no matter where we go. The wondering questions are at the end of the script. I’ll be especially curious to hear how the children respond to the wondering question, “I wonder where you are in the story or what part of the story is about you?”

Idea Starters for the Give a Gift to God Time:

1. Stars! Check out these GORGEOUS stars shown here, which would be easy for all ages to make. Children could write on the other side a Bible verse from this story, perhaps Genesis 15:5 “ See the many stars. There are so many you cannot count them. Your family will be like that.”

Or make a moon and star like this:

 Or let the children figure out how they’d like to make a star of their own.

2. The beginnings of the great family: make Sarah and Abraham and Isaac out of play clay or clothespins. Or make finger puppets of the family.  (Plenty -hundreds- of clothespins are in the art resource room in a cardboard box.

3. Each child individually- or all children together- could make a drawing of their part of the great family– their birth family and church family, all on one piece of butcher paper.

4.Sand drawings or sand art – to remember the desert in the story. Make a simple drawing- or the child’s name written in cursive- and cover the lines with glue, (I have new glue bottles in my office)  then sift colored sand over the glue. The glue will stick to the sand. Children could also include names of others in their family.

5. Act out the story: Abram and Sarai walking toward Haran, sleeping in their tent, walking along the Euphrates, Abram being with God and knowing God wanted them to move on, Abram building an altar in Shechem and then in Bethel and Hebron, God’s promise to Abram, Sarah hearing she would have a son and laughing, Isaac and Rebekah.

6. Make a door hanger to commemorate Abram and Sarai’s willingness to go where God led them. You could use 1 John 5:3: This Is Love for God:to Obey His Commands.

7. Let children who wish to make a map of the area of the story.

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

Enjoy!

Keeping the Sabbath Holy – At Market Street!

Good morning girls and boys. Remember this? (I take out of my bag the Godly Play heart shaped box of the ten commandments) The Ten Best Ways to Live- also called the Ten Commandments- are the rules God gave God’s people to help live the life God wanted for them once they were free and could choose how they lived. Do you remember what the rule was about Sunday? Yes, to keep the Sabbath holy. I wonder what that means to you.

Today in worship we’re talking about the passage of scripture where Jesus talked about the Ten Commandments, and said that he came to help us understand them in a deeper, bigger way.

I brought a book today to share to help us think about what Jesus might have meant. It’s called Last Stop on Market Street, by Matt de la Pena, and in it there’s a grandma who has learned from Jesus a bigger way to follow his commandment. I’ll read it to you really quickly, and we can see how Jesus made the commandment bigger and deeper.

(Read or skim the book, as much as time permits.)

So what do you think? How didd the grandma keep the Sabbath holy?

(Allow children to respond.)

Jesus came to help us understand that the commandment is just where we start, and that to really know God, we’ve got to let Jesus show us (from his own life) how to live these rules out.

Dear God, thank you for loving us so much that you gave us Jesus to show us the BIG LOVE you want us to have for each other and show to each other. We love you, God. Amen.

 

 

God’s Kissing Hand

This children’s sermon was written to be given right before the beginning of school.

Good morning girls and boys. I’m so excited to see you and especially our first graders to be with us! Welcome. I’m so glad you walked down.

Raise your hand if you’ve recently started something new- a new school, a new class, a new teacher. Well, I brought with me a book that you may know, one that I remember reading to my children when they started school, when they were even littler than you. It’s the Kissing Hand, by Audrey Penn. Do you know this book? It’s about a raccoon named Chester who has to start going to school at night, leave his mom, Mrs. Raccoon, and he’s really sad and scared about it. She does something for him to help him feel cozy and remember that he’s loved, even when he has to try something new. What is it?

(Allow children to respond.)

That’s right, she opens up his raccoon hand and kisses it. That way whenever he feels lonely and needs some loving from home, he can press his hand to his cheek and feel his mom’s kiss.  So they go to school and as he’s about to go in, he looks at his mom, and what does he do? He kisses her hand, so whenever she needs a little loving from him, she can press her hand to her face and remember how he loves her.

I love this story, and you know what? It reminds me of a verse in another book, the Bible, one that can help us when we’re trying something new, feeling lonely or scared or worn out and needing a little love from God. It comes from the book of Isaiah, and its God words to God’s people, whom God loves so much. It says,

“Look, I’ve written your name on the palms of my hands.

You’re always in my thoughts. Isaiah 49:16

Doesn’t that make you feel that God loves you? That God has written your name, our names, on God’s hands? As we pray together, I hope you can imagine God’s hand with your name written on it, pressing to your cheek.

Let’s pray: Dear God, thank you for loving us as we begin new things in our lives. Help us remember that we are always in your thoughts. We love you, God. Amen.

Who’s Got Your Back? What Kind of Bystander Does God Want Us to Be? (For a Back to School Sunday)

This Children’s Sermon was given on Promotion Sunday, August 19, ’18, the day before most of our kids start back to school. It was also written to go with the sermon of the day, based on Obadiah 10-15, titled, “What’s a Bystander to Do?”

See below for the information needed to make a backpack tag, as well as the design. This would be great for a Blessing of the Backpacks. Though we didn’t have the actual backpacks in worship, we did bless the kids. They were excited to get a tag for their backpacks!

Good morning girls and boys. I want to especially welcome our new first graders who may be here for the first time! I’m so happy you’re here!

I have a question for you. The other day I heard two adults talking. I wasn’t trying to listen, but they were talking loudly in line and I couldn’t help but hear them. The man was saying that he was worried about having to stick up for himself in a meeting where he was going to have to give some bad news to some people that they wouldn’t like. She listened and then said to him, “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.” I wonder what you think that means.

(Allow for responses from the children.)

Yes, I think it means that she’s going to stand up for the man, she’s going to try to make sure that everything goes okay for her friend.

Have any of you helped stand up for a friend?

Standing up for what is right is part of what being a follower of Jesus means, isn’t it?

I’m remembering when Jesus had Zaccheus’ back, and when he had the back of the woman who did something wrong. Do you remember that story? When a crowd was about to throw rocks at her because of what she did, he stopped them and said, “Let him who has never sinned throw the first rock.”

I know most of you will be going back to school this week & that means you might be meeting new people, and at sometime this year, they might need someone to have their back. But you don’t go alone. God goes with you. God has your back. God will be there to love you and help keep you calm, if you ask God. 

I have something for you that I hope will help you remember that. You can put it on your backpack or your lunch box to remember it if you want. You’ll see that on the back there is our church logo, because your church loves you and has your back too! We are ready to stick up for you. We want to help you grow into the person God made you to be!

I’d like to give you a blessing first and then I’ll hand them out and we’ll go back to our seats.

Dear God, we ask for your blessing on all of our students in this room- and for the teachers too. Help them to feel a closeness to you as they go into their classrooms. Open their hearts and minds to new friends and teachers. Help them to be brave and generous to everyone around them, showing them your love. Inspire them to do their best and be their best. We love you, God. Amen

 

The design comes from Illustrated Children’s Ministries, and you can find it and download here. We put our church logo on the back, with the help of the Avery template, here. We didn’t buy the business card paper- I just printed them off on regular paper, double sided. Card stock might have been better, but I was concerned that it might have been too thick for the laminator. It turned out fine on regular paper.

After you purchase and download and print your tags, you’re ready to laminate them. I plan on doing different tags each year, so I went ahead and purchased this small laminator at Staples, here. And I also purchased several sets of ready to laminate luggage tags, like the ones shown here. I was surprised how easy these are to make.

Blessings to you!

I Did a Thing Today and It Was Hard But I’m Still Alive

So yeah, I did a hard thing today.

You might do it all the time and think it’s no big deal, but it sure was big for me. It made me sweat and change my clothes twice and growl at my husband (not an eyes-batting-come- hither growl, mind you, but a get-out-of-my-face-even-though-you’re-just-trying-to-help-me growl.) When I’m trying to do a new thing that I’m not feeling confident about, I’m often a real pain to those I love. Sorry, people I love.

So what was the daring new thing I was trying to do?

A simple video of myself talking.

Yep, just me talking into the camera on my phone in my backyard. For the life of me, I don’t know what the big deal is about that. Becky Ramsey’s a weird bird. Somedays I wish I could take a vacation from her, I tell you.

In about a month I’ll be speaking at three events in Raleigh and Winston Salem, sharing some of the stories of my accidental pilgrimage in France from my book, The Holy Eclair,  for Baptist Women in Ministry of NC. So when the organization’s Executive Director, my awesome friend Ka’thy Gore Chappell, asked me to do a promotional video to put on Facebook for the events, I said “Sure!” And then I walked downstairs to my bedroom and started my official freak out.

I speak to groups all the time now, but it used to be super hard for me. As a teenager I was so unnerved to give a short little speech in front of my entire high school that I lost my eyesight on the way to the podium (yes I did) and had to say my lines from memory, just hoping I was facing in the right direction and could get back to my chair without tripping over someone! Thank goodness that’s over.  So what was the big deal about speaking to my camera in my backyard with only Jack the cat and some ants looking on?

I fixed my hair and redid my make up. I tried on a couple outfits and got so sweaty doing that that I had to fix my hair again, which had turned into a dandelion poof ball. I tried to get my dog Rosie to sit with me during the video, thinking that people could focus on her instead of my bangs, which seemed to be doing ballet on my forehead, but Rosie kept running away from me with a scared look on her face, even though I plied her with at least a cup of Life cereal.

When I finally got situated in front of the camera and gave up on the dog, Jack the cat kept walking on my lap during filming, flicking his tail at my nose. I tried to feed Jack some Life, but he sniffed it and knocked it onto the ground.

It was so weird filming, staring into the image of myself talking, while trying to focus on what I wanted to say about the three events, while inside my head I was saying DOES MY HAIR REALLY LOOK LIKE THAT? and MY, AREN’T MY EYES BULGY and I THOUGHT MY TEETH LOOKED WHITER THAN THEY DO. And then I’d forget what I was going to say next and I’d have to stop and start all over again.

STOP BEING SO CRITICAL, I’d scold myself. Then I’d try to think loving things while I kept my mouth moving on about the events. I want to treat my own self like I would treat my daughter or any girl child with feelings about her own body and self. But as I was saying GO YOU! I kept staring at that 53 year old lady looking back at me and IT WAS SO TERRIBLY DISTRACTING! It really was.

But I finally did it, and the video came out fine, I guess. I am who I am and I’m good with it, even with my precious poof ball hair and my eyes that see fine as long as they have contacts on them and my teeth which are all my own. (I’m practicing gratitude.) The whole experience reminded me that when I focus on the superficial things, it makes it harder to take care of the things that really matter! Besides, I really do like me, even if I do scare my dog sometimes and growl at my husband. Thank goodness they love me for who I am, even when who I am is uncomfortable .

So I did a hard thing today. But it won’t be hard the next time! So GO YOU, me!

And GO YOU, too! Grit and gumption to us all as we do hard things!