Report on 5 Alive: The Stories that Shape us – Endings and Beginnings
If it’s 8th November, Fireworks can’t be far away particularly when Elijah went off to Heaven in a Chariot of Fire! So on a very wet night, one of Standard Fireworks big ones filled the night sky just so that we could watch and think of what it was like to see Elijah leave!
The Dramatic reading of 2 Kings 2:1-11 was accompanied at the appropriate moment with the adults singing the tune to “Chariots of Fire”! Multi-sensory or what!
Reading from Acts 1:1-11 we thought about Jesus’ ascension and reflected on:
- How do you feel when someone gives you a job to do? (This included cleaning bedrooms, washing up, emptying dishwashers –taking responses from a very opinionated group of children!)
- Sometimes when people hear about the Ten Commandments that’s how they feel!
- How do you feel when you are given a job to do that you really want to do?
- When you are given a job to do which is the job you were born to do – it feels so different eg grooming the horse was great!
- Jesus has given us a job to do. He wants us to love God and love other people.We thought about whether this was cleaning the bath out job or a grooming the horse task! But how do we do that?
- Jesus has given us his Spirit to help us to love one another. But what do you do if you feel empty of the Holy Spirit? What do you do if you don’t know how to love someone? God gives us his Spirit to empower us. Elisha got Elijah’s. But it isn’t an easy task.
We looked at a Passage from Brian McLaren and then went into a Prayer activity. A Notice board had been covered with huge speech bubble containing the words ‘Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer’. We handed out post-it note speech bubbles and invited people to think of the planet, religious violence, families and communities, themselves, and write two things – ‘what you want Jesus to do’ and ‘what I will do’ to move towards healing and strength in these areas.
With DVDs and Music the 30+ people present had fun, got wet and shared together!
