Psalm 23 and a Prayer for Carers

 

Photo by Jonah Pettrich on Unsplash


'He tends his flock like a shepherd: 'He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young' Isaiah 40:11 

This verse struck me a few weeks ago as I prepared to meet and share the gospel with children and young people with additional needs on the coming Sunday morning. 

The last phrase, in particular, stuck out 'He gently leads those that have young'. I find this promise really reassuring. While the children and young people we support may not be the youngest members of our church family, they may be some of our most vulnerable. I've been using this verse to pray for myself and for those I serve alongside caring for and teaching these most precious members of our flock. Isaiah 40 is essentially a promise from God to rescue His people. Ultimately it points to our rescue by Jesus, the Good Shepherd. It's comforting that in the middle of this big promise God remembers those who are weak, vulnerable, dependent, and those who care for them. 

I've written a prayer, hopefully useful in praying for those who care...

...and some sensory ideas for prayer from Psalm 23, hopefully this may be useful in helping children/young people experience the love of Jesus, the good shepherd, for themselves

Thank you Lord that when you promise to rescue your people you remember the most vulnerable and those who care for them
Thank you that you promise comfort, guidance and a safe passage home to all

Help the most vulnerable of your people to experience a peace that passes their understanding and ours, the experience of being held close to your heart

Lead those who care for the most vulnerable of your people, for the parents, teachers, carers, child minders, support workers, grandparents, siblings and other family carers
Lead them in their role with gentleness and wisdom and let them feel your peace

Give wisdom and care too to all of us who teach the gospel to the most vulnerable in our church families
Lead us in our role and sustain us with your gentle care

Amen

Sensory ideas for prayer from Psalm 23



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to Sensory Bible Stories!

  Welcome to Sensory Bible Stories! My  name is Helen and I live in North London. I’ve  been working with children, teenagers and young adults with autism and learning disabilities for 10+ years, I’ve been listening to and learning about the story of the gospel for 30+ years! I’ve been challenged in the last few years to find ways  to share the wonderful good news of the gospel with children and young people with additional needs. I run a small group at my church in ( St James Muswell Hill )  for children and young people with additional needs who have taught me so much about how to experience the gospel in a tangible way. Anecdotally it seems that children with additional needs, particularly those with a diagnosis of a learning disability and/or autism, are under-represented in the Church in the UK. It's difficult to find statistics to back this up (if anyone has any please let me know) but to give some context there are approximately 351,000 children livi...
Read more

Creating a Sensory Prayer Box

Image
We’ve recently introduced a new resource to our Sunday morning sessions for children and young people with additional needs. I’d been contemplating how we could better incorporate prayer into our sessions and in particular how we could ensure that children and young people were active participants in times of prayer. I’d always included at the end of each sensory story a short prayer related to truths about God’s character and the gospel taken from that particular Bible story. I’ve talked here about how I’ve used these stories and prayers to pray for children and young people throughout the week. It felt important though to involve the children and young people more in prayer. I wanted them to be able to have some choice in what to pray for and to be able to explore and engage with items related to prayer. With this in mind I put together a shopping bag (which has now graduated to a shoebox!) of items which could be used by children, young people and helpers to pray during our sessi...
Read more

Nehemiah and the Start of a Story

Image
This wasn't a Christmas story but it did feature some gift-wrapped goodies! Welcome to Sensory Bible Stories. My name is Helen, I live in North London where I lead a small group at my church ( St James Muswell Hill ) which supports children and young people with additional needs to access Bible teaching. When I first started leading this group in 2018 I found it very difficult to source teaching materials for the children who were coming along each week. Children with very limited expressive and receptive language who were unable to access academic activities or engage in more abstract thinking. We enjoyed their company and they seemed to enjoy ours but we wanted to offer something more, an experience of the gospel which was accessible to them. Although I found lots of practical advice and encouragement from various organisations (see ‘useful links’ list), my many hours of googling ‘sensory bible stories’ and similar terms produced little fruit. Lots of otherwise great resources ...
Read more