Thursday, October 22, 2015

Sharing

​For Primary: You will need a box of chocolates.

Take two children to the back of the hall. One should be year 6 and the other year 1. Place a box of chocolates at the front, and tell them it is treasure. Ask them to race to it, and that the winner gets it. I am assuming that the bigger and stronger child gets to the treasure first (often the children are kind to each other and the bigger lets the younger win, but you need to tell them both beforehand that you do need the bigger and stronger child to win). 

She picks it up and says (ask her to repeat after you), 'I got here first. This is mine'. 
She gets everything and the smaller child gets nothing. 
Ask the other children if that is fair? When they all say, 'No', she then gives to the smaller child one of the sweets, but still keeps the rest for herself.

You could say that is a bit how it is like in our world. The bigger and stronger people get all the world's treasure and, if they are feeling good, they occasionally give one sweet to those who are not so big and strong - but they still keep the rest for themselves.

But then you introduce people to the King. 
The King says to the the older child (get the child acting out the role of King to say after you): 'That is not your treasure. I crafted it, left it there, and it is mine'.

Ask the children what the child should do.

Explain that the child could walk away with the sweets and pretend that the King does not exist. She might store them in a safe place, give some to her friends and to the people who do good to her. But when other people ask for some of the treasure, or try to take it, she fights them off. Her problem is that although she pretends that the King does not exist, there will always be something in her which is frightened that the King will come and get her.

Or she can realise that the treasure does belong to the King, say sorry for taking it for herself and offer it back to Him.
If she does that, she gets a surprise. The King says, 'You may keep the treasure. But remember it is not yours. It is my gift, not just to you, but for everyone.'

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

The story of the woman who gave everything

Based on Mark 12.41-44

Two people with smarties. One gives 5 smarties. One person gives 10 smarties. Who gives the most?

Now I'm going to give you a little more information. The person who gave 10 smarties had 10 packs of smarties. The person who gave 5 smarties only had 5 smarties. Who gave more?

Perhaps we would still say the person who gave 10 smarties, but they still had loads of smarties left over for themselves.
But I think that it was the person who gave 5 smarties - because they gave everything that they had.

Jesus was sitting at the entrance to the temple. He watched people put their money in the glass box. Many people put in large sums of money. £10. £100. £10000. WOW WOW WOW.  Look how much they are giving. They are such generous people.
A woman came in. She was very poor. She put in £1. Nobody said wow. In fact nobody noticed. Nobody except Jesus.

And Jesus called his friends together. They were still looking at the WOW person who had given £10000. Did you see that? He is amazing. Jesus said, 'Not really'. He is very very rich and it cost him nothing to give that amount of  money. He has got 100s of 1000s of pounds left. But that woman, who put in £1. That was all she had to live on for the rest of this week. She gave everything that she had.

It was only £1. Nobody noticed. But God noticed. And God said WOW

In a church in a town in Italy there are some of the earliest known illustrations of scenes from the life of Jesus. This picture shows this scene

Jesus is in the middle on the right. One of his friends is on the right. He is praying. And Jesus is blessing the woman who is giving. I have always thought of this widow as someone who was stooped and bowed. But here she stands upright with an immense dignity.

When we give, not to be noticed, and when we give - and I mean really give: you put all your weeks pocket money into a collection - nobody else will notice because it is not much. But you know. And although other people think that you are very little and insignificant, inside you can know that you are really big and tall.
And best of all, Jesus notices, and he says WOW