Lectionary Links (NL): July 19, 2020
Year 2: July 19, 2020
I Love My New Toy! by Mo Willems
(Written for ages 3-5)
Comment: This week, it may be helpful to remind children that 2 Corinthians is a letter Paul wrote, and that he was responding to real-life concerns from this group of people. One such concern was a person living among them who “has grieved all of you to some extent.” He hurt them in some way. Paul urges the Corinthians to “reaffirm your love for him” – to forgive him. In this “Elephant and Piggie” adventure, Piggie gets a new toy. Elephant asks to play with it and almost immediately breaks it. Piggie is angry, until Squirrel comes by to show that the toy is designed to break apart and come back together. In the end, Elephant and Piggie decide that their relationship is more important than any toy. “I do not want to play with your toy,” Elephant says, “I want to play with you!” This is the lesson Paul is trying to impart to the Corinthians – he urges them not to allow their disagreements to tear them apart. You might ask children to think about a time when they needed to forgive someone. How did it feel? What was most important to them in that experience?
Thanks to Joshua Andrzejewski, Union Presbyterian Seminary alumnus and chaplain for the pediatric and women’s health units in the VCU Medical Center, for writing the Year 2 Narrative Lectionary Links.
Lectionary Links (NL): July 19, 2020 by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.