The story of the children coming to Jesus takes up only a few short verses in each of the synoptic gospels, but its message is crucial for our little ones to understand. Jesus wasn’t a distant, untouchable celebrity, nor was he too busy or self-important to be bothered by the impressionable youngsters whose parents brought them to be blessed. The King of Kings saw the value of these precious babes and made sure his disciples learned the priority of welcoming children into the Kingdom. Not only should we adult disciples “let them come,” but we should learn to “become like” the little children. What an encouraging message for preschoolers! We had a lot of fun going through Week 30 of the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum
This week I introduced the story with a song from a lesson at missionarlington.org. It is set to the tune of “Are You Sleeping” and goes like this:
Jesus sat upon a hi—ll, with His friends, with His friends.
All the little children wanted to see Jesus
So they ran, so they ran.
“Stop the children, stop the children,” said the men, said the men.
Jesus said, “I love them, and I want to bless them.
Let them come. Let them come.”
It was a fun way to change things up a little bit, plus it required the boys to practice their listening skills to know what we were talking about.
We read the story from Mark 10:13-16, which I love because it specifically says that Jesus “took them in his arms and blessed them.” What a beautiful picture! Imagine what it would have been like to be a small child nestled in the arms of the kindest, gentlest, most loving person to ever walk the face of the earth. What pure delight to gaze into his twinkling eyes and feel his tender touch! I’d guess they never wanted to leave.
We acted out the story with our flannel board set, read from Ian’s ESV Seek and Find Bible, as well as from Read Aloud Bible Stories Vol. 1 and The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley). We played a version of”Red Light/Green Light,” like the disciples telling the children to “STOP” and Jesus saying to “let them come” (another idea from the missionarlington lesson). We also looked through Precious In His Sight, a beautiful photo book of prayers for children around the world.
For our Bible notebook page we made a collage of pictures of different kinds of children. First I cut a picture of Jesus holding a child out of a story book that had beautiful illustrations but such poor theology I didn’t want to read it to my kids. Then we looked through old magazines to find pictures of children. Ian has a little trouble cutting things out, so it was good practice. (I found it helped if I tore the whole page out so he could maneuver it as he cut).
Much to my disappointment, I couldn’t find a reading of the actual Scripture for our iPod playlist this week, but the songs did a pretty good job of telling the story, as well as our memry verse for the week (“Let the children come to me…” Mark 10:14)
