You Are Valuable

Items Needed:

A mixing bowl with soapy water

An empty mixing bowl

A wooden spoon

A dollar bill (or any denomination of your choosing)

A dish towel

2 raw eggs

½ cup flour in measuring cup

¼ cup sugar in measuring cup

A bottle of water

Have all your items on a table. Tell the children you are going to do this really cool trick you heard about. Would you believe that somebody could make a money cake? What would you think if I put all these ingredients in the mixing bowl and stirred them up and didn’t even have to bake it, and viola, a money cake! Wow!

I’m going to try it! So first, I’m going to put this dollar bill in the bowl. Then I’m going to add two eggs. Crack the eggs and drop them in the bowl on the dollar. Look around like you’re trying to figure out where to dispose of the shells, and then just drop them in the bowl too. It will be okay. Use the wooden spoon to crunch the eggshells up a little.

Add the flour. Add the sugar. Add some water as your stirring the mixture making sure the dollar bill gets very gooey and yucky!

Okay that looks good. Now, I’m going to cover it with the dish towel. This should only take a few minutes. Peek under the towel. Hmmm… maybe a few minutes longer. Okay I’m sure this is going to work.

Peek under the dish towel again. Hmmm, I guess it’s not going to work. I must have done something wrong. I guess I’ll just throw all this away. Carefully pick the dollar up over bowl, and say, that’s too bad I have to throw it all away. That was a perfectly good dollar, but now it’s all dirty. I guess it’s no good. Nobody will want it now.

At this point, you should have at least one of your children telling you they will take the dollar. You seem surprised that they would want it. It’s all dirty and gross.

Tell the most vocal student that you have a bowl of soapy water, and if he wants to clean up that nasty old dollar, he can have it. Invite him up and put the dollar in the soapy water for him to clean it. Let him use the towel to dry it off. Hold the dollar up and say I guess it is valuable after all.

The bible tells us that we have all sinned. Those are the bad things that we do. Lying, stealing, and disobeying our parents are all sins. So is being selfish and being mean or cheating in school. When we do these bad things sometimes it will make us feel like we’re no good. We feel worthless. Even though we do bad things Jesus loves us. He loves us so much that He took the punishment for our sins by dying on the cross. If we ask Jesus to forgive us, just like we washed all that yucky stuff off the dollar bill, Jesus will wash away our sins. Jesus loves you, and you are very valuable to Him!