Dear Messy Family
Please let us know that you will be attending by emailing
nmcmessy@gmail.com
As you know, Messy Church has happened monthly on a Wednesday from 4-6 p.m. for many years. It’s a time for children and their carers to have a fun and creative time together while learning more about the Christian faith and events from the Bible. There is a celebration time in church which is usually led by our minister and this is followed by a meal which we all share together.
Happy New Year! We gathered together on 14th January to talk about where we belong. Our Bible story was about Jesus and his family who went on a journey to a big festival in the Temple in Jerusalem, and what happened there.
We thought about ‘belonging’ in all sorts of ways.
We live on the Isle of Wight, so we thought about the places here where we belong and drew pictures on a big piece of paper. Can you see pictures of our houses and even our house numbers? But there were other things too – drawings of wild animals -the octopus which we might see on the beach or animals we might see in the Wildheart animal sanctuary, so perhaps these are some of our ‘happy places’ too.
We belong at Messy Church, so we drew pictures of ourselves in a church. Some people have their names next to their picture, but can you guess who the others are?
And what about all the other places where we are linked up to other people ? Look the network we made. The strands of wool join us up to other people like family, friends at school or in activities we do
And we made jigsaw puzzles to show how we fit together with other people and where we belong.
We thought about where Jesus belonged. He lived in a family and did things with them. One day, when he was 12 years old, his mum and dad, Mary and Joseph, took him on a long journey with lots of other people, from Nazareth where they lived to a festival in the Temple in Jerusalem. Here they spent time learning more about God from the teachers there. We coloured in a picture and talked about what Jesus might have learnt there. We turned our picture into a scroll so we could take the story home and look at it again.
In church we thought a bit more about this story; some of us are about the same age as Jesus was. How would we have felt about a long journey with lots of other people to go to a big festival? Very exciting, perhaps! When it was time to go home Mary and Joseph and their group of friends set off and it wasn’t until a day or so later that they realised that Jesus wasn’t with them! Panic! Where was he? They were very worried and returned to look for him.
At long last, they found him in the Temple talking to the teachers. He was so interested in learning about God he wanted to learn more. Jesus knew that he belonged not only in his family in Nazareth but also to God’s great big family. And that great big family includes us as well!
We listened to a song about ‘belonging ‘ before we went to share a meal together.
See you next time, on 11th February!