THE KING’ S BUSINESS
435
BEGINNERS AND PRIMARY
By Mabel L. Merrill.
(Jesus and the M EMORY VERSE : “ God loveth a cheerful gi+er.”—-2 Cor. 9 :7. Approach .—There is something in my hand that every one o f you will be able to tell me what it is when I let you see it, for you have seen many of them and use them quite often. A penny or cent, the smallest amount o f money our country makes, and we think sometimes it will not buy very much, but I am going to show you a picture o f a piece o f money that was used in Palestine, the name o f the country where Jesus lived when He was on earth. It was called a mite and was made o f copper too, like our pennies, and you can see from the picture it was just a little smaller in size than our penny, but it was not worth near as much, for it would take eight o f them to make one o f our pen nies, so now you know just how much a mite is and how little you could buy with it. Today we have a story about two mites that went to church, which Jesus saw, so you see nothing is so small but that His eye sees it. Every boy and girl here this morning, except the new ones, can repeat .our memory verse, for it is the one we say each Sunday morning before we march and drop our pennies and nickels in, and it is printed on our offering basket. “ God loveth a cheerful giver.” Prayer, thanking God for His gifts to us. Lesson Story— In our story today Jesus has been very busy teaching the crowds of people that gathered around Him, and answering their questions. He was in a court just in front o f the temple, and which they had to pass through before they could enter the temple. (Eor primary age, explain enough about these courts o f enclosures so the children will get some idea o f position o f the treasury.) I think He must have been tired and sat down where He could see- the people as they walked by and dropped their offerings into the treasury, which was a large box or
Widow’s Gift.) chest with an opening in the top where the money was put in. You see they did not have men pass pans or baskets during the service in the temple like ,we do in our churches, but this box was in the court just before you came to the temple. Jesus was watching the people and knew just how much each one gave, and He knew just how much they loved Him by their gifts for you know Jesus can see right down into our hearts, so when we are poor and only have a little to give He knows all about it, and then when boys and girls and grown up folks have money and spend it all for themselves and do not give God any or only a little, Jesus knows they do not love Him. There were some rich peo ple putting in their offerings here and Jesus saw that a good number o f them were cheerful givers. Now that means that they just loved to give and were happy every time they had a chance to make their offer ing. After a while Jesus sees a poor widow woman coming to make her offering, and she only had two mites. ; (Let the children tell you how much a mite was in our money, and explain how two mites would be only one-fourth o f our penny.) This was all the money she had. Our story tells us she was a widow, and that means her husband was dead, so she, had to go. out and work to earn money to live on, and she may have had some little-children to care for too. Now children how much do you. think she put in when she passed by ? This happened many years ago when Jesus was living on earth, and because this poor widow woman loved Jesus and gave with a cheerful heart, God has put this beautiful story in the Bible so we could know about it, and it shows us that when we truly love Jesus, we will be cheerful givers. Closing prayer, thanking Jesus for giving us so many blessings, and asking Him to make us all cheerful givers.
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