The kid’s group at the Church was just finishing their Thanksgiving Feast. The kids had planned and made the Feast (with a lot of help from the Leader), and their families had been invited to come and share the Feast with them. After everyone had eaten as much as they wanted (and no one got sick or died!), the Leader gathered all the kids and their families together for a time to learn a little more about God. The Leader told them that this was the first of their Christmas lessons, he took out some sheets of paper and began to read:
Imagine Jesus wrote five letters to you just before Christmas to explain the meaning behind His coming to earth and being born as a baby. What would Jesus put in those letters? What would He say? How would He say it?
In this series we will attempt to create letters that Jesus might have written. At best this will be a feeble attempt to express the heart and feelings of our Savior, and it should be recognized as a very feeble attempt!
Dear People:
This is Jesus, how are you doing? I thought that I would write to you because I know that you have many questions about Me and my Father. I will answer your questions by telling the story of this world from creation up to the present time.
The Father, the Holy Spirit, and I make up the three parts of God. I know that this is hard for you to understand that God is made up of three distinct persons but is one. You will never have a complete understanding of this until you reach heaven, and we meet face-to-face. What you do need to understand is that God has existed forever and is very creative. We wanted to create a wonderful world, and He created the world by speaking it into existence! It was created with perfection. The ultimate part of this creation were the first two humans, Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve were created in God’s image! No other animal, bird, or insect was created in the image of God! Humans are creative, they have emotions, their spirits live forever, and they can give and receive love.
Love is one of the major characteristics of God. God wanted humans to be able to love Him, but love comes with a risk. Those that love must choose to love. God chose to love humans, so He had to give them free choice so that humans could choose to love God or choose to not love God. God knew ahead of time that humans would make the wrong choice, but God wanted humans to have the chance to choose to love Him.
At first everything was wonderful! God made a special garden called Eden for Adam and Eve to live in. They did not have to work, and food grew on all the trees and bushes. All they had to do was pick some food and have a meal. The best part was the friendship that God had with Adam and Eve. There was no sin, and God enjoyed walking in the garden with them and talking to them as friends. It was wonderful, and there was only one rule: God told them not to eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden. If they ate that fruit they would die.
Satan, the enemy of God, tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. He told Eve that if she ate the fruit she would become like God! Eve had to choose between God, and the lie Satan told her. She chose to believe Satan and ate the fruit and then convinced Adam to eat some of the fruit. Their love for God and their friendship with God was destroyed at that moment. When God came to walk with them and talk with them, they hid from God. Adam and Eve tried to make clothes for themselves out of leaves, but that did not work too well. God chose to love them and killed an animal and made clothes for Adam and Eve from the skin of the animal. God gave the new clothes to Adam and Eve, and they had a choice to make; were they going to accept the clothes and turn back to God and start loving God again, or were they reject the gift of clothing and continue to walk away from God! They chose to accept the gift and start loving God again!
Adam and Eve learned that when God’s rules are disobeyed (this is called sin), payment must be made by the shedding of blood. Something must die to pay for sins. In this case God Himself chose to kill an animal because of the first sin. After the blood has been shed, then the gift of forgiveness must be accepted to show that the person is choosing to love God.
Adam and Eve hoped that after accepting the clothes from God that everything would be just like it was before they sinned, but things had changed. Now Adam and Eve were slowly dying, and now they had a sin nature. They would sin again, many more times during their lives, and they would pass on this sin nature to all the humans that came after them.
A solution to the sin problem was needed, and God promised that at the right time He would send a Savior who would provide forgiveness for sins.
That’s all for now. I will write more later.
I love you!
Jesus