Today’s reading was about the temptation of Jesus in the desert, which immediately follows the baptism story we read yesterday. Again, we read the Bible story from three different Gospels: Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; and Luke 4:1-13, and again it was interesting to see how concise Mark was compared to the other two Evangelists who recorded this event. The children tried desperately to find a reason that our symbol was three stones–it being a nice-looking grouping wasn’t a good enough answer for them. They did finally give up on trying to make a connection there, though!

I did take this reading as an opportunity to point out to them that even Satan can quote Scripture, (this was a big surprise to them!), and will try to use it to confuse people, and get them to do things they shouldn’t. It was also a good opportunity to remind us all that Jesus fulfilled all of the Law perfectly, even under desperate circumstances, (we tried to imagine what it would be like to go without food for forty days, and quite frankly, none of us could fathon it), whereas we fail miserably, (and constantly!), even under relatively good conditions.