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For the tots
All of you will be looking forward to spending lots and lots of time out of doors playing with your friends and perhaps also playing with either your toys or those of your friends.
God gives us many long days to enjoy when the daylight stretches seemingly endlessly from morning till late at night. It is good for us to be out and about but it is also good to say 'Thank you' to God for them. Do remember to look at all the wonderful flowers and trees as you go to new places for your holidays. Probably you go to the seaside and love to paddle in the shallow waters and listen to the big breakers coming in - on nasty days the waves will seem a bit like the soapy suds your mum has when she washes something by hand. Do be careful for you are precious to us as well as being precious to God. Have fun! Enjoy yourselves!
For the teens
A few years ago a TV programme was made in Atlanta, Georgia in the USA to honour one of the senior pastors who had retired many years earlier.
Despite being 92 at the time the Church asked him to preach. After a warm welcome and introduction the speaker came forward after the applause had quietened down. With great effort, slowly and seemingly sliding, he left his high back chair and went to the podium. He had neither a note nor a paper of any kind. To steady himself he placed both hands on the pulpit. Quietly and slowly he began to speak.
"When I was asked to come here today and talk to you, your pastor asked me to tell you what was the greatest lesson ever learned in my 50 odd years of preaching. I thought about it for a few days and boiled it down to just one thing that made the most difference in my life and sustained me through all my trials. The one thing that I could always rely on when tears and heart break and pain and fear and sorrow paralysed me - the only thing that would comfort was this verse-
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