Week 10: March 9

Our theme for March is "Jesus Shows Us What to Do"

Week 10- The Lord's Prayer (Matt 6:5-15)

This week we'll be making placemats so that the kids can take home a copy of the Lord's Prayer and remember it throughout the week as they sit down for breakfast/dinner. 

I'm going to start out by giving each student a copy of the Lord's Prayer that I made using an adorable frame from Scrappin Doodles and an adorable font created by the amazing Khrys Bosland. It looks like this, with two prayers on a single sheet of paper:

As they color the frame around their prayer (and the older ones can cut around the outside edge as they wish) I'm going to talk them through the first part (verses 5-8)... something like this:

Jesus is continuing his Sermon on the Mount this week, as He explains what we can do as Christians to be a good example for others. He told people about being nice to others, following the laws we have, and even giving to the needy. Then He went on to tell about prayer.

Raise your hand if you pray at least once a week. Keep it up if you pray every day. 
When do you pray? (Before meals, at bedtime, etc.) 
Raise your hand if you think you're pretty good at praying. Keep it up if you would be willing to pray for our snack today or one day. How about upstairs? Keep your hand up if you would be comfortable praying in front of the whole church. 

Some people get really nervous when they pray. I don't mind praying in front of kids, but even I get a little worried when I am asked to pray in front of grownups. Grownups can be scary sometimes! But we shouldn't ever be nervous. After all, we are praying to God, not grownups! It's great to be comfortable praying in front of people, but it's even more important that we can pray when we are alone with Jesus.

In Matthew, chapter 6, Jesus told His friends that when we pray, we should pray in private. This is because some people think that they are really good at praying and want to show off their skills in front of other people. Do we pray to show off? No, we pray to talk to our Father! So Jesus suggests that we pray when we can say whatever we want to Him and not have to worry about other people. 

The next thing He said was to not babble. Babbling means they repeat the words over and over again instead of saying what we want. 

Jesus wanted us to become better at praying, so He gave us a suggestion. Starting in verse 9, Jesus tells us exactly how to pray. Although our English words are a little different from the Hebrew He spoke, the translation in meaning is key. That's what we're going to talk about today. How to pray, and how to know what we're saying. 

At this point in the lesson, I'll have all of the kids stop coloring and I'll collect the crayons. I don't want them to be interrupted or sidetracked while we're doing this next part.

Try to take a couple of minutes and read The Lord's Prayer to yourself. Think about any words that you might consider to be extra-important. If there are words you don't know, think about those, too. We'll go over it together in just a minute.

Alright. Let's look at the first part. "Our Father, Who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name." That's us saying "Dear God in Heaven, your are holy." God is our Father, and "art" is an old-fashioned word for "is." The part that says "Hallowed be Thy name," that's another word for "holy." So the prayer starts out by us addressing who the prayer is to: God in Heaven, who is holy.

Read the next part to yourself as I read it out loud. "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in Heaven." We are asking God to do His will and not our own. We don't want to be selfish, do we? "Thy" is an old-fashioned word for "your." We're saying, "Your will be done, not ours."

In the long part that comes next, it says, "Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." We are asking for God to give us what we need (not want), and to forgive us for our sins. The last part means we are also asking God to help us forgive people who have sinned against us, or, those who have done mean things to us. That's kind of hard sometimes, isn't it? But if we want God to forgive us, then we need to forgive others.

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;" That means we are asking God to keep us away from sin. We definitely need that, don't we?

And the last part adds, "For Thine is the Kingdom, And the Power, And the Glory, forever. Amen." We are once again saying that God is everything we need, forever. And then we close our prayer with respect by saying "Amen." 

That's pretty powerful, isn't it? If we were to put the prayer into modern words, it might say something like this:

Dear God in Heaven, you are holy! Everything will be just as you say it will, both on earth and in Heaven. Please give us what we need, and forgive us of our sins. Help us forgive others, too. Keep us away from things that are bad, and keep us near things that are good. For You are everything we need, forever. Amen. 

After this I will have the kids repeat each verse as I go through the prayer so they will all get the chance to pray to themselves. I'll then give them each a gluestick and piece of card stock so they can attach their prayer to the placemat. I'll give the crayons back out if they want to decorate the outside of their card stock, and will provide stickers as desired. I'll then call the kids up by tables to bring their placemats up for me to laminate. 

My laminator is a personal-use one I got for Christmas a few years ago. (Don't hate... I make a lot of workstation activities for my classroom!) It's like this:

Anyway, this will make them a bit more sturdy than if we had just used contact paper, and I hope by it looking somewhat professional they'll be encouraged to keep it out so they can learn the prayer!