One of MIE’s Global Mission Partners is Leprosy Mission. Why not head over to their website and see what they get up to. There are plenty of stories, insights about their work, things to do, situations to pray for and ways to get involved, including using Lego™ and help raise awareness about Muzaffarpur Hospital!

A lot of the encounter with Jesus in this passage is built around the idea of ‘cleansing’. In Leviticus, leprosy is a picture that helps us to grasp the reality of sinfulness (NOT saying that those who had leprosy were any more or less sinful than anyone else!). You’ll notice the man asks to be made clean, not healed. And Jesus says: ‘Be Clean’. the idea is stronger than ‘sin makes us dirty’, but that’s pushing in the right direction. There are no end of ways to engage with this in interactive and fun ways. From using a basketful of dirty laundry, a pile of dishes, or deliberately making something dirty and then washing it… to something a bit more labour intensive (or you could just watch the video…)

You cold get some washable ink pens, and write / draw pictures that represent sinful thoughts, words or actions on a sheet. Washing it so that it is cleansed could be a great activity to help your child(ren) ‘see’ what Jesus longs to do when we repent ofo ur sin.

…Or you could do some craft work around Psalm 51:1, or perhaps Ps.51:10, which could then be memorised, or turned into a prayer…

The idea of cleansing from our sin is a powerful one that helps us to think not just about being forgiven, but of our being ‘de-contaminated’ – having sin ‘washed out’ of us so that it doesn’t shape us anymore. A river polluted at source carries that pollution down stream with it. Jesus speaks of our heart a bit like this: out of the overflow of our heart, we act and speak and think (see e.g. Matt.15:18. Once our heart is cleansed, then what flows out of it is clean too.

You can download this as a 1 side of A4 printable PDF here