Today, being the first Sunday of the month, it was Communion, which seems to allow me to pick a hymn for today which is less 'Lent' and more 'Passiontide'.  It is a very lovely Roman Catholic hymn, based in Isaiah 53, with the delightfully named tune Yellow Bittern, BPW No 229

See, Christ was wounded for our sake,
And bruised and beaten for our sin,
So by his suff'rings we are healed,
For God has laid our guilt on him.

Look on his face, come close to him-
See, you will find no beauty there:
Despised, rejected, who can tell
The grief and sorrow he must bear?

Like sheep that stray we leave God's path,
To choose our own and not his will;
Like sheep to slaughter he has gone
Obedient to his Father's will.

Cast out to die by those he loved,
Reviled by those he died to save,
See how sin's pride has sought his death,
See how sin's hate has made his grave.

For on his shoulders God has laid
The weight of sin that we should bear;
So by his passion we have peace,
Through his obedience and his prayer.

Brian Foley (1919-2000) © 1971 Faber Music Ltd, London.

Once there were two preachers who were going to use the parable of the wise and foolish builders as part of the all age bit of the service. 

The wise preacher found lots of lovely images online and created a wonderful PowerPoint presentation to accompany his telling of the tale.  The foolish preacher took a plastic tray, a flat piece of rock, some 'sand', some wooden building bricks and a watering can.

The wise preacher regaled the congregation with the exploits of the two builders.., even having the audacity to accuse the foolish builder of laziness or slipshod work (neither of which is in the original story), before announcing the moral of the tale.

The foolish preacher invited the children forward, tried to encourage them to build two identical 'houses' from her bricks, one on the rock, one on the sand.  A child was entrusted with watering can to  simulate rain... and the uppermost block toppled from the house on the rock, while that on the sand stood firm.  After a hasty rebuild of the house on rock, the intensity and direction of the rain was switched to undermine the house on the 'sand'.  No neat moral lesson to deduce from the tale, but rather 'I wonder what happened next'?  What if the wise men helped the foolish man to build anew house?  And a new 'moral' that sometimes we mess up, but Jesus gives us each other to help us start again...

Three times in the last decade or so I have attempted this.  Three times the house on the rock has collapsed under 'light rain'... is someone telling me something?

* The 'sand' I used today was sawdust made by adding water to wood-based cat litter, as I didn't have any sand.  In the past I've used both play sand and builders' sand with the same effect.