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You can find the Parent Pages for the Parable of the Sower Lesson here.
If your children have spent a reasonable amount of time in Godly Play, they can likely recite a large chunk of the opening to our Parables. "We know, we know... it's a gold box, it's a parable, it's hard to open, can we get started?!" There are six core Parables in the curriculum and they all begin the same way.
Recently, though, I heard a wonderful story from someone who met Jerome Berryman, the creator of Godly Play, when he was still actively speaking and teaching. As he began to tell a story, a child marched up to him and said, "I've heard this story before."
Berryman was unruffled. He took the child's hands and asked her if she'd ever had a birthday before.
Of course she had! She told him proudly about her last birthday.
"Well then I suppose you don't need to have any more birthdays then," Berryman replied.
As anyone who knows children could predict, the child didn't like this answer. Of course she needed to have more birthdays. She needed to get older, she was still growing.
"Yes, you were a different you at your last birthday and you were a different you when you heard this story before, too. I wonder what you'll discover in the story this time now that you are an older and wiser you?"
He invited the child to sit next to him and the story began.
It's a good reminder that, just as we re-encounter passages in the lectionary and gain new insights, the same happens in our circle. We hear something new, and something that is just for the us that is us today, present and listening to the story.
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