Good morning boys and
girls!
So
who is getting dressed up and going our trick or treating? Have you got your
costumes and your goody bags ready yet? Hey, if you want lots of goodies, come
to my house. My mother has been stocking up for weeks, and if I don’t get rid
of them on Halloween, both of us will be into them, and that’s something we
don’t need!
One
thing you will need that night is a light so you can see where you’re going. If
you can’t see where you’re going, you could get hurt, but you will also know
what it is like to be blind. There another kind of light that we need so we can
see where we’re going in life, and so that we won’t be spiritually blind. That
is the light that Jesus gives us.
The
light of Jesus gives us light and hope, just like Jesus gave sight and
spiritual light to a blind beggar named Bartimaeus. The story is from Mark 10:46-52. Boys
and girls, we just heard Jesus make a promise to Bartimaeus and then keep it.
Have you ever made promises to people and not kept them? The story I’m going to tell you
shows us how important it is that God keeps his promises, especially about
letting us see the good things in life. The story is about a girl named Flavia.
Flavia was in the fourth grade. She saw an advertisement on television that the
Ice Capades would be coming to town. She told her mother that she wanted to go.
Her mother said she and her father would talk about it. That night before
Flavia went to bed her father told her that when the Ice Capades came they
would take her. She forgot about it until later in the week when she saw the ad
on TV again. She ran in to where her parents were to find out if they were
going. “We already have the tickets,” her mother said. "We promised we
would take you, and we are going to keep our promise." And they did.
After
that, Flavia came home from school excited because her class had visited the zoo.
She told her parents that she wanted them to go to the zoo with her so that she
could show them all the animals she had seen. They said they would take her to
the zoo on Sunday afternoon, not this week, but next week. Flavia had forgotten
all about it when her father said on the way to church, “This afternoon, we are
going to the zoo.” He remembered the
promise he had made to her. It made Flavia very happy to think her father
remembered his promise.
Another
time Flavia was teasing her little brother as he played with blocks in the den.
As soon as he would stack them up, she would knock them down. Her mother told
her that if she didn’t stop, she would have to go to her room and stay there.
She didn’t stop, and her mother marched her straight to her room and closed the
door. Her mother kept her promise. How do you think Flavia felt about that?
That
night, when they were getting ready to say prayers, Flavia said to her parents,
“You are just like God.”
“What
do you mean?” her father asked.
“Whatever
you say will happen, happens,” she answered.
“No,
Flavia, we are not as strong as God, but we have learned from God that it is
important to make good promises and keep them.”
“I
want to make a good promise," said Flavia, "I want to tell God what
I’m going to do and do it.”
“That’s
good,” said her mother. "What
promise do you want to make?”
“I’ll
have to think about it,” Flavia said.
And
so she did. Then they prayed a prayer like this: “Dear God, help us make good promises
and keep them. Amen”
Let
us close our eyes for a moment of prayer. Dear God, thank you for sending Jesus
to be the light of our world. Help us be shining lights of faith, and keep our
promises so that our light will lead others to you. We ask this in the Name of
your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Bibliography
1. Roland McGregor, “Children’s Sermon for Pentecost 22”.
Retrieved from childpage@mcgregorpage.org.
2. Lawrence O. Richards, NIV Adventure Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zonderkidz ; 2009)
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