Ps.23 traceables & Ps.42 Bible Study
Today’s children’s talk draws on the opening sentence of Psalm 42. During the talk, I speak about God knowing our thirst and His presence being like a deep stream of flowing water in the midst of this time of waiting and of missing so many things.
Right before the lockdown, the children - across all ages - had been working with Psalm 23 (which expresses something similar to the opening line of Ps.42).
They may have been learning just one line of the Psalm or they have been looking it up and comparing it with other parts of Scripture. Another form of work the children do at church is to create personal prayer cards and scripture books as a form of actively meditating on God’s Word and being present with God. For this they draw, trace, practice calligraphy, add color and write. Some construct handmade books.
For today, here are a series of images (that the children will recognize) from Psalm 23. One work during the sermon can be to trace the image and then add color (if desired) as part of creating a prayer card or starting a scripture booklet. Right click on the image to save it or use the ‘snip’ function on your computer to copy and then print the image.
Encourage the children to work slowly - they don’t have to finish today. Tracing can be easier if they hold the image up on a window and place their sheet over it. Next week we will post basic instructions on building their own scripture booklet at home during this time.
Materials needed: plain white paper, colored pencils, a black pen (optional) or pencil
For readers, an alternative work is to look up a series of other passages in Scripture that speak of water in a similar way to Psalms 42:1 and 23:2. With a Bible on hand, children can practice looking up (they do this already at church) and reading Exodus 15:22-25 or Exodus 17:1-6. They can think through the following questions, writing down answers if they want (I’d be happy to respond to these answers via email if they’d like that):
Are there ways that my situation feels like the Israelites’ situation in the desert? What is the same? What is different?
What had the Israelites lost? What were they missing?
What does God do in this story? What is God like in this story?
What kind of book is Psalms? What kind of book is Exodus? For hints on this they can look at the picture of the Bible Cabinet from their room at church. If they have questions about this, they can email Tiffany (children@littletrinity.org) or Natalie (natalielundy@littletrinity.org).
for tracing
for tracing
for tracing
Holy Bible cabinet at church - part of the older children’s curriculum