Hey all.

This month we are learning stories from Jesus’ life. The next two months will be His teachings and miracles. As always, these stories are intended for the 3-8 year old range, but can be adapted/expanded as needed.

Today’s story is from Luke 19.

This story is about a man named Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus lived in Jericho and Jesus was traveling around teaching the people about God. He came to Jericho and by now a lot of people knew about Jesus and wanted to see Him. Zacchaeus did too. He was a tax collector (and do you remember from our story about Matthew how the people felt about tax collectors? It wasn’t good.)

Now Zacchaeus was a very short man, and he tried and tried to see Jesus, but couldn’t see over the crowd, so he decided to climb up into a big sycamore tree so he could see Jesus.

Well, when Jesus came by, He looked into the tree and said, “Zacchaeus, get down…I’m going to come to your house.”

Zacchaeus was very excited about this! He hurried from the tree and took Jesus to his house. The people all said, “Jesus is going to go to THIS guy’s house? He is NOT a nice guy…why would Jesus eat and hang out with HIM?!”

But Jesus reminded them that He came to “seek and save the lost.” Jesus WANTED to be with the people who needed Him most. Zacchaeus promised to do the right thing and share everything he had with other people. When Jesus showed Zacchaeus that He loved him, Zacchaeus responded just the way God wants us to. When we realize how much God loves us, we can serve God and be loving to other people.

For our craft today, we cut out rectangles from brown construction paper, a cloud shape out of green paper and made a tree, then cut out a triangle and circle to be Zacchaeus then the kids drew on a face. Our text reads: Luke 19, Zacchaeus finds Jesus!

Thanks for joining us! Love to you all!