How I spend my day off

It’s a Saturday. My day off. You’d think I was sleeping in, having brunch and going for a nice relaxing walk down the beach. But no, I’m not doing any of that (although I would have got a sleep in if I didn’t forget to close my window overnight... the cockatoos woke me up early in the morning!)

I’m not doing typical day off things - I’m busy looking for scratch art paper because we need some for an activity for kids church tomorrow (the black represents darkness / sin and when Jesus died on the cross, he took away our sin. He revealed who God created us to be - whole and without blame).  

I’ve seen scratch art paper many a time in my various shopping travels. Can I find it now? 2 stores and it’s nowhere to be seen. Sold out. 

So I’m now off to a third store to see if I can get some. 

Why am I writing to tell you this? 

Great question. 

Partly, to vent about my frustrations of my past procrastination because now I’m having to do this on a Saturday... Partly because as I grabbed a quick lunch, I got bored of scrolling on my phone, so I started writing this instead. Mostly, I’m writing this because I know there are so many other kids pastors and leaders doing a similar thing. Using their time off to buy, make, create or invent seemingly insignificant things that won’t have that much of an impact.

I think people who don’t work with kids won’t get why finding scratch art paper is so important. ‘Choose some other activity then’, they might say. ‘Is it that important to have scratch art? Why bother spending your day off going to multiple shops to find something that kids will spend five minutes doing?’ 

Let me tell you why I am spending my highly valued time to find some of this scratch art paper... it’s because I know 5 things:

1. I know that the kids that will be at church tomorrow will learn a lot through this activity. They will learn that God removes our sin and shows us what we truly are. I know that this is the cornerstone of our Christian faith. 
2. I know that God is good and Jesus himself taught in a way that the people would understand. So a non-kids-ministry-person may think that I should just tell the kids this message without the visual aid, but I know that that’s not the best way to preach to children. 
3. I know that the word of God is living and active (Hebrews 4:12) and that because of this, if I am preaching God’s word through scratch art, it will speak to the kid’s hearts.
4. I know that this will help build a foundation of faith with these little ones, so that one day, they will fully understand the implications of what it means that Jesus died for our sins. For now though, they can say and write the words ‘Jesus died for my sins’ while they scratch off whatever material that black stuff that covers the coloured paper.
5. I know that when parents pick up their children and see what they wrote on the scratch art paper they will ask their kids what they talked about in kids church today. That parents will prompt their children to talk about what it means when the child wrote ‘Jesus died for my sins’. Perhaps in a conversation with their parent the child decides to follow Jesus. Perhaps, the child will explain to their non-Christian parent about Jesus’ great act of love. 

Because of these things, I am confident that I need to find this scratch art paper, and I don’t care if anyone things I am wasting my time! I am doing this for the kingdom!

And now, I have successfully motivated myself to go and drive to a third shop to see if I can find some paper. 

EDIT: I found some. Hallelujah!

2nd EDIT: It went absolutely fabulously. Totally worth the effort that went into it! I was too busy talking with kids to take photos of all of their art, but I was able to take a shot of one girl’s artwork who stayed behind to help pack up.