This was a story that I made up to tell the kids in Scripture today about what life is like as a Christian, both in this age and the age to come. Especially since I'm teaching young kids I decided to do this via a story. As I was thinking about this I realised that a good allegory about this has already been written; namely, Pilgrim's Progress. But that is a little long to read out to the class.
It was done in a hurry, but hopefully it's not too heretical :-)
~~~~~
There was a girl named
Katie. When Katie was 8 she decided to
ask Jesus to forgive her for her sins. Katie told her friends about
Jesus. She said, “Jesus loves you. He died to forgive your sins.” Some her friends said to her, “why do you follow
Jesus? That’s just silly. It’s a made up story. You must be an idiot for believing it. Katie wanted to get really mad at them, but then
she remembered that Jesus said, “If you love me, other people are going to hate
you and be mean to you. Don’t worry,
they just do that because they hate me.”
So Katie calmed down. Then she
prayed, “Jesus please make them love you and not hate you anymore.”
When Katie grew up she wanted
to be a missionary tell people overseas about Jesus. But one day Katie got sick. She was so tired she could hardly get out of
bed. Her mum came into her room and
said, “Come on Katie. It’s time to get
up.” “Mum I don’t feel so good”, Katie
said, “I’m so so tired. Can I stay in
bed today?” “OK” her mum said, “you can
stay in bed today”. So Katie stayed in
bed and rested. Before she went to sleep
she said, “Jesus I know you’re powerful and you love me, so can you please make
me all better by tomorrow.”
So Katie went to sleep. When she woke up in the morning she was still
tired. Her mum came into her room and
said, “Come on Katie. It’s time to get
up.” But Katie said, “I’m still really
tired Mum.” So her mum said, “I’m going
to take you to the doctor.” Katie had to
go see lots of doctors. Every day she
prayed, “Jesus I know you’re powerful and you love me, so can you please make
me all better by tomorrow.”
Eventually one of the doctors
said, “Katie you are very sick. You have
leukaemia.” Every day she kept praying,
“Jesus I know you’re powerful and you love me, so can you please make me all
better by tomorrow.” Then one day Katie
died.
The very next thing she knew,
she was in a bright and shiny place. It
was very beautiful. There was a big area
of grass. It looked so beautiful, so she
took off her shoes, and went running down the hill. The grass was so beautiful and soft; there
weren’t any prickles in it at all.
When she got down to the
bottom of the hill, she started to hear some noise. So she went to investigate. She went a bit further, and the noise got
louder, then she came to a big high fence.
The noise was coming from the inside.
She said to herself, “It sounds like everyone was having a great time,
there’s all this laughter. Ooh I hope I
can go in!”
So she walked along the fence
and found a gate. On the gate there was
a sign. It had big writing on it “ONLY
FRIENDS ALLOWED!”. Standing next to the
gate was a man. He said to Katie, “Are
you a friend of my master?” “I don’t
know”, Katie said, “Who is your master?”.
“My master’s name is Jesus”, he said, “are you friends with him?” “Oh yes!” she said, “we’ve been friends for so
long!” So the man opened the gate and
let Katie in.
When Katie got inside she saw the
biggest party ever. There were lots and
lots of people. They were all laughing
and chatting and eating. There were all
sorts of different people there. There
were old people and young people. There
were people from all different countries too, people with white skin, people
with black skin, brown skin and yellow skin.
There were lots of people there.
They were sharing the food around with each other. No-one was yelling or fighting or
grumpy. And Katie thought to herself, “No-one
is fighting or being selfish. I’ve never been a place like this before.”
There was a band playing
too. They sang lots of great songs. They were praising Jesus, saying, “You are
amazing and holy. You have made a whole
new family of people. You have got rid
of all the bad things in the world.” And
Katie thought to herself, “These people love Jesus, just like me”.
As she was listening to the
band someone came up to her and said, “Here are your new clothes.” And they handed Katie the most beautiful
dress she had ever seen. She put it on,
and it fitted her perfectly.
She twirled around in her new
dress, and out of the corner of her eye she spotted someone who was so bright
and shiny she could hardly look at him.
She stopped to get a closer look at him.
Then he looked up and saw her too.
Then he smiled and started walking towards her. Immediately she knew who he was. And Jesus said to her, “Welcome home Katie.” Katie smiled and thought to herself, “This is
the best place ever.”
