The Lost Sheep

Hi everyone and welcome to Christchurch Kids. Today we are looking at the parable of the Lost Sheep. Jesus told a story about a farmer who had 100 sheep but one went missing. Here's a lovely animation to tell us the story.

How did the farmer react after he had found the lost sheep?

Jesus told this parable because religious leaders had started to complain that Jesus was spending time with people who made bad choices. They didn't think he should welcome people like that. Jesus told them about the farmer who left his 99 sheep to find the one that was lost. The farmer was so happy to find the sheep that he ran and told all his friends and neighbours that the sheep that was lost had been found.

Jesus was comparing the people who made bad choices to the sheep who had lost his way. He said that God is excited when people who have forgotten about God choose to come back to Him and make good choices in their lives. 

Jesus was telling us that everyone is welcome with God.

A Game

Have you ever played "Hunt the Thimble"? It's a traditional game and you may not have a thimble to play it with nowadays but you can use any small object to hide. Maybe you could hide a small sheep?

To play the game, one person hides the sheep and everyone else playing the game covers their eyes. 

No peeping now!

When everyone starts looking for the sheep, the person who hid it will give clues. If the seeker is getting close to the hiding place, the hider says, "Getting warmer" and if the seeker is getting further away, they say, "Getting colder. If they are far away, the hider can say "You are freezing cold!"

When the seeker gets really close, it's fun to say "You're really hot now!" or "You're boiling hot!". 

Jesus talked about himself as The Good Shepherd. He said that he knows his sheep and his sheep know him. He wasn't talking about actual sheep. He was talking about his followers. We are Jesus' sheep! He said that we will listen to Him and follow him and he knows us.

This is the verse on our colouring page today and you can download it here

There is a fantastic Chat Mat about the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Chat Mats are great to download and colour and talk about with others in your family. You can download it here

Prayer

We are going to spend our prayer time today listening to God, our Good Shepherd. When we spend prayer time being quiet and listening for God it can be easy for our minds to start to wander. Here is a word cloud you can look at as you are spending time being quiet. You can ask God to speak to you through the words from the parable. Maybe you can talk to someone in your family about what the words mean to you.

You can look at the word cloud on the screen or you can download it here

Our song today reminds us that God's love is big! It's big enough for everyone to join in.

As we have been talking about sheep again today, we thought it would be nice to see the singing lambs again! Look out for the cheeky grey one!

Thanks for joining us today. We hope you have a great week and we'll see you on Wiggle Wednesday.