As the children come forward be playing with a lump of play-dough. Talk about how what is so cool about play-dough is that you can make it into anything that you want. You can make a snake, a letter, a shape, whatever your imagination allows (make one or two of these things if you can). If we don’t like what we have made we can start over and try again, over and over-that’s the really neat part of play-dough.

 In a book of the Bible called Jeremiah, the people had forgotten about God. They did not remember to pray to God or that God loved them very much. God wanted the people to remember that they are loved and so God tells the people that God will make a new promise with them. God will forgive them for forgetting God and will help them to know about God in their lives. God reminds them that they belong to him/her and that nothing changes that. God will work in their hearts to help them remember to whom they belong and forgive the things that they had done that were not nice.

God does that with us too! We know that changes us and makes us new, day after day, over and over. Each day God promises to be with us and to help us to live God’s love in the world.

Here is a piece of play-dough for each of you to have. Let’s make a heart out of it to remind us that God changes our hearts to live in God’s love and to share God’s love every single day.

 God, you promise to be our God and that we are your people forever. Thank you for making us new every day and for loving all people. Amen.

 Make the sign of the cross and say, “You belong to God.”