Thoughtfulness and the Healing of the Paralytic

I love weaving the Bible into our character development series. After all, that is our inspiration for developing more character. We want to capture our kids hearts to desire to be more like Christ. The Bible story I immediately thought about as I was considering thoughtfulness is found in Mark 2:1-12. It is the story of a man who is paralyzed. Jesus is teaching in a house that is jam packed with people. There are so many people there that no one else can enter the building. The paralyzed man had some very thoughtful and amazing friend. They did not seem discouraged by the fact that getting to Jesus seemed nearly impossible. They crawled to the top of the house and made their way through the roof. They then lowered their paralyzed friend down to Jesus. After an interesting interaction with the scribes where they questioned his authority, Jesus healed the paralytic, and he went out glorifying God. I read this story to my girls. I talked with them about how thoughtful this man’s friends were. They could have gone to Jesus and sought after their own desires. However, they diligently pursued Jesus for their friend. What is also interesting to not is that Jesus, “seeing their faith” said, son your sins are forgiven. That is thoughtfulness. That is sacrifice. We all need friends like this to be our advocates. After the story and chat, it was time for a our fun craft.

I took a shoe box and cut a hole in the top. I told the girls they could decorate the inside of the box to make it look like the inside of the house. They should keep in mind that it was a crowded house and decorate it however they wanted. 

I used my hot glue gun to put together a couple of popsicle sticks. I cut up one popsicle stick to cross it and create stability. I also hot glued a couple ribbons onto this stretcher so the kids could have fun lowering the mat through the hole. 

The next step was to cut up some stiffer stock paper. I cut it up into 6 appropriate size pieces. One of the girls drew 2 friends and the paralytic. The other drew 2 friends and Jesus. Corban just colored the whole time.

The final step was to tape all of the characters into the scene. The girls had fun lowering the paralytic into Jesus’ presence. 

Thoughtfulness and Thinking of Others First
The Secret Thoughtfulness Game
Thoughtfulness Played Out
Thoughtfulness with Daddy