A Hole in the Roof
I use this lesson as a fill in, ie in holiday times or after you have finished a major topic, major topics being the long term teaching for example, Christmas, Creation, Easter, The Lord’s prayer, Beatitudes. This is a quick 2-3 week lesson plan.
The idea is to introduce the children to an all loving Jesus, a healer, a man of miracles. The craft ideas will help cement the story as they make craft relating to lowering a man in a stretcher or rug through the roof.
I use the The Beginners Bible illustrated by Kelly Pulley and I read the story in full each week at Mat time before our teaspoon prayer and then the craft.
This is the story in case you don’t have The Beginners Bible;
Jesus was at a house, preaching. Many people gahered there becuse they heard he was healing the sick.
The house was overflowing with people. Many had to stand outside. There was no room left, not even outside the door.
Down the road there lived a man who could not walk. He was paralysed. His friends believed Jesus could heal him.
They carried him to the house. It was still too crowded. So they carried him up to the roof.
The man’s friends made a hole in the roof and lowered him down to Jesus. Jesus saw that the men had faith. He knew how much they loved their friend.
Jesus said to the man, “Your sins are forgiven.” The man stood up and walked! The crowd praised God.
The illustrations really help the children work out the story, here are the questions and involving conversations I have with the children, that I repeat each week.
Everyone loved Jesus, that is why so many people gathered around to see Him, imagine if this room was full of people, full to the brim, lets guess how many people this room would take to make it completely full? - the children will come up with some wild numbers, which is fun and gets them invoved.
Imagine if our Sunday School was so busy that people had to wait outside the door to hear, that would be funny wouldn’t it, how do you think our Sunday School could get more busy? - the answer here is we could invite our friends to come to Sunday School.
Wasn’t it lovely that the man that could not walk had good friends that knew that Jesus could heal him and make him walk again. Wouldn’t it be awful if we couldn’t walk, if our legs didn’t work? - let the children think on that for a moment. Wouldn’t it be the right thing for us to tell our friends about Jesus ? We know that Jesus loves us and can heal us, we should share the good news of Jesus with everyone.
I ask the children in the next part of the story, where is the floor? where is the roof? Imagine if there was a hole in our roof what would happen? - the children usually say the rain would come in or we could see the sky! I say it would be OK to make a hole in a roof if it was as important a thing as to lower a man down to see Jesus, holes in a roof can be mended but only Jesus can heal the sick man.
Jesus healed the sick man, he could get up and walk, how happy do you think the man would have been? - let the children answer this and get invovled, they always do.
The messages here are
Everyone followed Jesus
Good friends tell their friends about Jesus
Only Jesus can heal
See the craft section for the crafts to go with this story over the 2/3 weeks.