Now, I have a question as I start this morning. Do any of you have a close friend who you trust? Do you have a friend you would lend a chocolate bar to and trust them to not eat it? How about a friend who you would trust to look after you if you fell over in the playground?
Well, I have a story from the bible that is about trust.
There was a man in the bible, we don’t have a name for him, is it okay if we call him John?
This man, John, couldn’t walk, he had a medical problem which meant he couldn’t do anything with his body, he was paralysed.
One day he heard that Jesus was coming to where he lived. So he asked four of his friends to help him meet Jesus. He had heard that Jesus could help people, could make them better. So his friends carried him on a mat to the house where Jesus was. Maybe John would get to walk. But when they got to the house they saw that there were people everywhere. People in the house surrounding Jesus, people all over the place. Such a big crowd they couldn’t even get to the doorway of the house. So John and his friends had to decide they could meet Jesus.
So here we have a problem. John and his friends needed to be good at problem solving. So, I want to see how good you are at problem solving.
Here I have some rings that are attached. It is possible to separate them but not by pulling them, through sliding and twisting the rings. Does anyone want to volunteer to try and get them apart? 
Now you have to trust me when I say it is possible to get them apart.
Now you have to trust me when I say it is possible to get them apart.
Get some children to try and solve it. You can buy puzzles like this in Hawkins Bazaar or similar shops. I bought mine from The Discovery Store.
Right so back to the story, can you remind me who was the main person in our story? And who did he want to meet?
Right so the friends of John had to work out how they were going to get him to Jesus. Well, here is a clue for those good at problem solving. Houses in that part of the world had stairs on the outside, stairs which went all the way to the roof. This meant people could go and sleep on the roof when it was really hot. So, what the men decided to do was go to the top of the roof of the house Jesus was in and burrow in the top, making a hole big enough to lower John down on a mat so that he could meet Jesus. Imagine the trust he had to have in his friends. John had to believe they wouldn’t drop him but would in fact keep him safe. I’ve got an example, we will use the bendy man as John and this green piece of card with string attached as our mat.
Now, imagine if the men had been worried about dropping him, they might have shaken the mat and John would have fallen. Or if one of them had started daydreaming, do any of you daydream? Well, if one of them had started daydreaming then John would have fallen. Or if they hadn’t worked brilliantly together lowering it at the same time John would have fallen. So John had to really trust his friends.
(demonstrate all these things happening with the mat, showing bendy man falling off every time)
Well, John didn’t get dropped and eventually he was in front of Jesus. Now Jesus wasn’t annoyed but so happy at all that John had gone through to meet him. And he told John that all the bad things John had done wrong, all the times he had been mean and hurt people were gone. Then he told John to stand up, take his mat and walk.
And do you know what, John did just that, he stood up and walked.
John’s life was changed that day because he trusted that Jesus could change him and he trusted his friends to take care of him and help him meet Jesus.
We can look for friends who we can trust but we can also try to be the sorts of friends that people trust. So we can take care of our friends when they get hurt or even look after their things for them when they ask us.
Let us pray and thank God for giving us friends that we can trust in lots of different situations.
Prayer…
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