If your worship this week includes a look at Jesus’ parables about the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven 1 3 3 1 -3 3 , 4 4 -5 2 ), here’s a suggestion for a conversation with children from Moira Laidlaw.
Here’s a chance to use your imagination with the collection of parables in the gospel. Invite your local baker to speak about making bread and how the smallest amount of yeast can transform flour. If you go with the mustard seeds and try to hand these out it can get very messy trying to pick one seed out of a bowl as they are the size of a pinhead! So why not use pumpkin seeds to hand out to everyone and buy - or get from a grower - the biggest pumpkin you can find. This image would be more familiar to everyone. You not only have a large pumpkin which can feed lots of people - you have a whole lot of new seeds to plant more pumpkins. Or if sunflowers are available - hand a seed out to everyone and then show a sunflower and describe one large flower can produce over a thousand seeds. I know because I counted them once! From tiny things big things can grow. When we share Jesus’ love in even the smallest way it can grow and blossom in people’s lives and who knows what might happen. (Perhaps people from the congregation can share stories from their own lives about how faith was planted in their lives and how it has grown.) The challenge is to start the growing process right now.
—Moira Laidlaw, Liturgies Online. Check her website for other good worship resources.
For more creative worship resources based on the lectionary readings for July 2 4 2 01 1 1 2 A in the list of “Labels” at the right side of the page.
