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Sermon |
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March 13, 2005 A Sermon for the Children of Who knows what this is that I brought today? It’s a storybook. In fact it is one of my favorite story books because I read all the stories in it to my children when they were little. How many of you like to have stories read to them? And how many of you like to read the same story more than once? In fact one of the things that makes these stories fun is that you read them over and over and know how they are going to turn out. When Cinderella’s sisters treat her so mean and then go to the ball without her you feel angry and sad, but you already know how the story will end. So you know that in spite of the meanness Cinderella will get to go to the party. And not only that, she’ll be the most beautiful person there. And when the clock starts to strike and Cinderella has to leave in a hurry, how do you feel? But you can even enjoy feeling worried because you know that the Prince will find her and they’ll get married. And in the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, when Goldilocks has eaten all the porridge and gone to sleep and she hears the bears coming up the stairs, how do you feel? But you can enjoy the feelings because you know how the story turns out and that Goldilocks will get away. For people who come to church, life can be like that. We listen to the stories like the one we read this morning about Jesus’ friend. After a while we know how the story comes out. We know that some pretty awful things happen in the story, but in the end, Jesus makes it O.K. That makes it possible for us to pay attention to the story—even the sad parts. And life is like a good story. Sometimes you have good days and sometimes you have bad days. In fact, sometimes some sad and some scary things happen to us. But we know how the story ends, so even on our bad days, deep down inside we know that everything is going to be O.K. We know that nothing can ever really separate us from the love of God and from the people we love. So no matter how bad we might feel, we know that in the end everything will turn out all right. That means that deep down inside, we can always be excited about life. We can go through bad times as well as good times, and still do our best and make the best of everything. Because we know that in the end, God will make everything turn out O.K. Knowing how the story comes out makes life even more exciting. I hope that over the years you will listen to a lot of stories in church and Sunday School. I hope you’ll soon know how every one of them turns out and that the stories will remind you that in our lives, too, in the end, everything comes out O.K. AMEN
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