Aim:
to make pupils consider the difference between liking someone: that loving
someone is more than just being drawn to them.
1. Show the pupils things that you like e.g.
music (a CD), chocolate, books.
Show
them things you love e.g. pictures of family, friends, animals, and finally a
picture of Jesus.
Make
the simple point that liking things is not the same as loving them.
2. Do a survey by getting pupils to put their
hands up to answer whether they like or love things e.g.
Ice
cream
Football
Swindon
Spice
Girls
School
Weekends
Sunshine
Lime
green
3. Tell them you are going to ask them a
question, and you want them to think about the answer for a minute
quietly. Ask: “Can you love someone you don’t like?” Get them to put their hands up if yes or no.
4. Tell them this story from William Bausch’s A
World of Stories (put into your own words)
A woman named Mary Ann Bird tells her story.
“I grew up knowing that
I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I
started school my classmates made it clear to me how I must look to others: a
little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled
speech.
When my schoolmates
would ask, “What happened to your lip?” I’d tell them I’d fallen and cut it on
a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an
accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside
my family could love me.
There was, however, a
teacher in the second year whom we all adored—Mrs. Leonard by name. She was
short, round, happy, a sparkling lady. Annually we would have a hearing test. I
was virtually deaf in one ear; but when I had taken the test in past years, I
discovered that if I did not press my hand as tightly upon my ears as I was
instructed to do, I could pass the test. Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone
in class, and finally it was my turn.
I knew from past years,
that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her
desk would whisper something and we would have to repeat it back, things like
“The sky is blue,” or “Do you have new shoes?” I waited there for those words
which God must have put into her mouth, those seven words which changed my
life. Mrs. Leonard said in her whisper, “I wish you were my little girl.’
Ask:
did Mrs Leonard like the girl’s appearance? (Probably not)
But
did she love her? Definitely.
There
may be people at school that you don’t like, but God still wants us to like
them.
Alternative story: Use the famous account of Corrie Ten Boom’s meeting with her concentration camp guard in a church after the war, and the way in which she showed the courage to love by shaking his hand.
5. (Optional)
Briefly describe Jesus’ ordeal on the cross, asking “Did he like being
hurt?” “Did he like being put on the
cross?” “Did he like being insulted?”
etc.
Make
the point that Jesus forgave all these people and so loved them, even though he
didn’t like what they did.
6. Pray:
Dear God, thank you that you like us, and you love us.
Help
us to love those we don’t find it easy to like.
Amen.