Thursday, April 18, 2013

Signs of Jesus

On Sunday, at our Worship Together service*, we were still immersed in the Emmaus story.  We talked about Jesus being beside us and not realizing it.  We sang and signed the song that featured the invitation from the Emmaus walkers "Stay with us.  For the day is nearly done."  We did our Faith 5:  shared highs and lows, read the Bible, talked about how our highs and lows connected to the Bible reading, prayed for each other, and blessed each other.

And then, we got our Art Assignment.  We were to walk around the church, inside and out, and talk about what reminds us of the presence of Jesus.  If we had cameras, we were to take pictures.  One of the pre-teens at my table asked if she could use my camera.  I said sure, so the photo below is hers. 

Off we went to see where we were reminded of Christ.

There's the obvious, of course.  We're in a church designed to remind us of Jesus:  crosses, the Communion elements, candles, other symbols.

And outside we have a butterfly garden, so we've got both natural and human-added elements to the garden. 

I loved how people thought beyond the obvious.  One child said, "The bricks remind me of Jesus because they're heavy, like the cross that Jesus carried."

The pre-teen with my camera said, "The spiderweb reminds me of Jesus because it's sticky, and Jesus sticks with you."

I love that most people have cameras with them now, in the form of cell phones.  Once, this assignment would have required a lot of disposable cameras.  Now, it's easy.

But even if we didn't have cameras, it would have been a good exercise.  It's one I'd like to carry into my everyday life.  It's far too easy to get bogged down in the drudgery that daily life can be.  Events of this week remind us that we have too little time on this earth to take any day for granted.

Below:  my favorite image taken with my camera:




*Our Worship Together service is a family service designed to combine faith formation (the kind we used to rely on Sunday School to do), worship, and creative approaches to being a Christian.

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