Safe and happy.

Last Sunday, we did the story of Jesus and the teachers in the temple in the older Sunday School group.

The kids had some wonderful ideas about what Mary, Joseph and Jesus would have been thinking and feeling at different parts of the story, as well as why Jesus would have chosen to go to the Temple instead of somewhere else in Jerusalem.

One child suggested that the Temple was where Jesus felt "safe and happy."  So I grabbed on this and used it as my theme for introducing our activity (which was to use the various art supplies that were out - clay, paint, felt tips, craft sticks, pipe cleaners, etc., to make a picture or model of a place that is special to us.)  I told children to make or draw "a place that makes you feel safe and happy."

Several children made very elaborate paintings of their own houses.  One did a brightly coloured painting of the trampoline in her back garden.  One did her grandmother's house and told me her grandmother had died last year.  I happened to be doing a painting of my late grandfather's house as well, so this gave us a chance to talk about bereavement, which was unexpected but pastorally important.  Two boys, who are brothers, made sculptures of each other (a person can be your safe and happy place, can't they?).  And one boy did a 3-d model of the Garden of Eden.

People, this is why I do this job.