We’ve been doing Zacchaeus play this week, in preparation for Sunday club. I had a think about it at the weekend and stuck the passage (Luke 19:1-10) on the fridge to act as a reminder.

The main point the sunday club group are focussing on in their ‘friends of Jesus’ series is that Zacchaeus changes when he becomes Jesus’ friend … I had no ideas really about how to show that point through play! I asked Dave and he made some suggestions but agreed with me that for Mikey and Dan it’d be clearer to focus on verse 10 which says

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.

It seems to be the big thing we learn about Jesus in the passage. It’s pretty amazing isn’t it?!! The total transformation we see in Zacchaeus shows how well Jesus does his job.

So our play focussed on seeking and saving/finding the lost!

There are loads of things you could do for this. We hid finger puppets under scarves and searched until we found them, I hid things in bags, we played a lot of hide and seek – for the boys that works best just dashing round the corner and saying things like, “where’s Dan? Dan is lost! I’ve lost Dan! Where’s Dan? I’m going to look for Dan, I hope I find him!”.

Mikey’s also really keen on hiding under blankets and he loves being found!

I’m planning to also try out burying some things in a box or bucket of sand so they can be dug out or uncovered. The main thing is using the same kind of language from the verse over and over again and keeping it fun and a bit silly! I repeat phrases like “Jesus came to find us”, or “Jesus finds lost people”.

I’m giving Jennifer a few things to help her carry on the types of play we’ve been doing if she needs to do separate stuff with Mikey on Sunday morning.

Next week it’s Luke 10:38-42, Mary and Martha.