Jesus heals the blind man

As the story goes, Jesus and His disciples were walking along when they saw a man born blind. We had a girl, and she was adorable—I forgot to take a picture. I will have to pose her this Sunday for a make-up photo. (Here we go!)

The disciples ask who sinned, this man or his parents. We had one of the kids write those two options on the board and asked the parents to guess how Jesus answered. We got one vote for the man, two for his parents.

Jesus then was supposed to spit on the ground and make clay to put on the man's eyes. Decided NOT to persuade the boy playing Jesus to really spit; we have enough of that already, thank you! I had some "mud" (wet, ground-up chalk) ready. Also decided NOT to actually put the stuff on the girl's eyes, just in case. (We were supposed to be healing blindness here, not causing it!) So he just smeared some on her forehead above her eyes. Then someone led her to a basin of water marked "Siloam" and she washed her face.

Then came the arguments over whether she'd really been healed & how. So she had to explain it several times. We'd chosen an articulate child or we might really have had some frustration, ha! Finally they chase her away because she insists that Jesus healed her.

Jesus then meets her and she recognizes Him by his voice. She acknowledges that He is the Son of God if He says He is, and He praises her for not only having physical sight but having a heart that sees clearly as well.

We had prepared for the game last week by recording each of our adults saying, "Hello, do you know who I am?" (as we had had Jesus say in the story). So then the kids had to recognize the voices, like a blind person would. That was fun. Some surprises of who were the good listeners and who weren't!

For craft time, just as Jesus "fingerpainted" on the man's eyes, we fingerpainted on some pictures (of butterflies because they had large spaces).

I have recently thought I would like to start talking over the story with our smarter kids during the free play time, to try to give them a chance to apply the Bible to their lives more. This week, though, I ended up just talking with one little girl who is usually very cheerful but had been rather cranky that morning. Just to try & find out what was wrong. Of course she said "nothing," but just having someone listen to her ten-year-old worries seemed to make her happier. I was really glad for the chance to do that, while Kevin was supervising all the rest of the kids single-handedly; thanks Kevin!