God’s Love in Print

Like many churches do, on most Sundays of the year I gather with the youth and children of our congregation for a children’s message.  Sometimes we just talk.  Sometimes I offer an object lesson.  Always we pray at the end.  Over the years I have said many things to them and they have said many things to me.  For my part, the most important thing I ever say to them is simply, wonderfully, perfectly, the good news that each one of them is loved by the God of love in Christ from their head down to their tippy toes.  Loved, not for who they aren’t, but for who they are, exactly as they are.

One week when I was preparing for a sermon about Scripture (Nehemiah 8 and Luke 4) I came up with this way of describing the Bible: “God’s love in print.”

It lent itself to a children’s message.  Here is what we did:

1. as I invited the children forward I asked them to bring one of the pew Bibles with them.
2. I discussed how the Bible sometimes seems big and heavy and old and dusty and complicated.
3. I made the point that, in the end, the Bible is really just a simple love story of God’s love for us.
4. to make the point visual, I took the Bibles the children had brought with them and rearranged them into a heart shape on the chancel steps like this: 
5. we closed with a prayer of thanks for God’s love.
6. we left the bible-heart for the rest of the service.

Cool.  Simple. Fun.  Could be done any Sunday of the year.

© Rev. Kevin Goldenbogen, 2016

Kevin Goldenbogen is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ serving an amazing congregation in the foothills of the Green Mountains of Vermont. He skis, climbs, runs, bakes bread, rides a red Vespa, and tries every day to follow Jesus. He is married to the perfect woman and has two boys who he loves beyond words.