Lectionary Links (NL): June 14, 2020
2nd Sunday After Pentecost
Year 2: June 14, 2020
The Feeling Flower by Leah Dakroub
(Written for ages 2-5
Comment: After the devastation Job has experienced in the previous two chapters, he expresses his pain and sorrow in no uncertain terms: “Let the day perish on which I was born” and “let that night be barren!” He would rather not have been born than have experienced the loss of his fortune, the deaths of his children, and such intense physical suffering. His honesty here is hard to read, and yet it can help us talk with children about how we can express our feelings. Dakroub’s simple book about a flower named Zippy shows how different types of weather make Zippy feel. The sun leads to happiness – but also annoyance after awhile. Rain leads to sadness, storms lead to fear, rainbows lead to joy. Emotions are, to some degree, like weather; we can’t always control when or how they come. But we can learn to identify them and speak about them, as Job does in chapter 3. Often, children are told not to cry, not to show their anger – but this biblical story shows its main character openly expressing his feelings. Another great companion piece would be the Pixar movie “Inside Out,” and you might consider using the Golden Book version of that film to help children understand that all feelings can be valuable and helpful to us.
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): June 14, 2020 by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
