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Meeting Plans

Session LJ01: Jesus - God With Us

Age group: 5-6
Series: Life of Jesus
Theme: Jesus: Nativity
Total duration:  mins

This meeting plan tells the nativity story. It is hoped that the children will start to see that this was an enormous thing for God to do for them. Hopefully the children will see this familiar story in some new ways.

 

Bible references: Matthew 1:18-2:12, Luke 2:1-21

Leader's notes
Leader's notes (show)

As I put this session together, it is the beginning of January and the Christmas season is past for another year.

I guess it would be so easy for us to switch off from the Christmas story. After all, it's probably the most well known bit in the whole Bible. We maybe did a whole heap of nativity-based plays and activities when we were at school, have sung hundreds of Christmas song over the years, and know that this season comes around with alarming regularity…

Being the mother of 4 and 5 year old boys has opened my eyes to how I might once have seen the Christmas story. Small children come at things with such freshness and originality. They often don't struggle like we do with the massive concepts inherent in this story. The fact that Jesus was God is something they can just accept whereas we wrestle with the nuts and bolts of it for the rest of our lives. And of course wrestling with the truth is an important part of being a believer, but so is childlike faith.

This Christmas, God has really been speaking to me about what it means when we say that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. I got totally carried about with John 1 – the Word becomes flesh – even getting into the original Greek – logos, very obviously referring to Jesus. And when you read that passage replacing “word” for “Jesus”… well, it all gets a bit mind blowing!

And then when you start to really dwell on what it meant for Jesus who was fully God to limit himself to being fully human… We can't even begin to imagine.

In writing this session I haven't tried to give the whole story. I haven't addressed the whys of it all. I think it's enough at this stage to draw attention to the miracle that is Jesus – Immanuel – God with us.

If you are covering this session and it's not Christmastime, I'd encourage you to go for the whole Christmas feeling anyway. Put up the decorations, turn up the carols, munch on the mince pies and celebrate everything that Christmas is the beginning of! 

Notes

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