11. Faces

Props: A shopping bag and four A4 'smiley' pictures.

Hello children! Now I know you always like to bring you something in my bag when I talk to you! Well, I have brought something to show you this morning, but I had trouble putting it in this bag. So I brought this shopping bag along. In a minute I want you to tell me what is in this bag. [Put shopping bag over head and seek responses] No, not my head ... it starts with the letter 'F'. ... Yes, that's right, my face! We are going to talk about faces today.

I wonder if any of you knows how to make / pull a bad face? Oh, that's terrible! You have my permission, just this once, to turn around and show the grown-ups! OK, now turn back this way. I want to tell you a little story.

Each week I have coffee in the city. One time two ladies came in to have coffee nearby. One of them had a pusher with her little boy in it. The ladies chattered away happily, but the little boy was bored – he had nothing to do. So I thought I'd cheer him up. I caught his eye, and made a face at him. He grinned and turned away, but soon he was looking at me again. I made another face. This time he laughed and looked away. So I had cheered him up. Next time he looked at me, he decided he would make a face at me. Bad idea! For just at that moment his mother looked at him, and told him off for being rude! Ho ho, very funny! Of course I had to confess.

Do you know there is a story that if you make a face and the wind changes, your face stays like that? Is it true? You should have seen how handsome I was when I was younger!

Now thinking about faces, suppose you are a very worried person. What sort of face might you put on for that? Notice how you get wrinkles across your forehead. And if those wrinkles appear every day, they get imprinted in your face, so that when you get older, you will look worried all the time, even when you're not. [Show Smiley.] What about if you are grumpy all the time? Yes, your mouth goes down at the corners, and you get these lines down past your nose, and down from the corner of your mouth. And you know what happens if you do that every day ... . [Show Smiley.] How much better to smile and laugh every day. Then you get these nice little creases at the end of your mouth, and little laughter lines at the corners of your eyes. [Show Smiley.]

Now there is just one more face. In the book of Exodus, I read that Moses went up to the top of Mount Sinai to talk with God, and when he came down again, his face shone. That is, people could tell by his face that he had been talking to God. Also in the book of Acts, it tells about Stephen who was a fine Christian man. When people looked at Stephen his face was like an angel's. [Show Smiley] So here is something to think about. If we walk with Jesus day by day, and let the love of God fill our lives, after a time will it show in our faces/ Will people be able to say: I know he belongs to Jesus because I can see it in his face?