God Is With Us

I Meant What I Said and I Said What I Meant

Materials

Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss

Leader

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had this book read to you or maybe you’ve read this book. Anybody? Have you read it, Olivia? Can you tell all the big people what the name of it is?

Olivia

Horton Hatches the Egg

Speaker 1

Horton Hatches the Egg. So, if you haven’t heard this before, I’ll tell you a little bit about the story, and then when we get upstairs, we’re going to read it. It’s all about faithfulness. Faithfulness is when you say you’re going to do something and you do it. Are you faithful? OK, good. I see a lot of head nods. Very good.

There was a lazy bird named Mayzie. Mayzie was a lazy bird and she had an egg. She was sitting on her egg and she got just a little bit bored. She thought of all the other things that she could be doing besides sitting on the egg. Horton the Elephant walks by and Mayzie says, “Hey, what about you sitting on my egg for a little while. I need to take a break.”

Horton, being the nice friend that he was, he said, “Well, I guess. OK. I’ll sit on your egg for a little while.” Horton sits on the egg, and he sits, and he sits, and he sits. He sits through rain. He sits through hot weather. He sits through snow and sleet. Some of his friends come by and say, “Horton, why are you sitting on that egg?” Horton keeps saying this. He says, “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful 100 percent.”

No matter who came by, no matter who was laughing at him, no matter who was pointing their fingers at him and saying, “You’re crazy,” he kept saying, can you say this with me? “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant is faithful 100 percent.”

Kind of reminds me about God. God is so faithful and when He tells us something, He really means it. There a guy in the Bible and his name was Simeon. Kind of sounds like cinnamon. Can you say Simeon? Say it. (children repeating) Simeon. Simeon was close to God’s heart and you know why? Because he always listened to God and he did what God wanted him to do, so God found that he was faithful.

He said, “Simeon, because you are so faithful, I want to do something for you. Before you die, I’m going to make you a promise. Before you die, you will see the Messiah and the Messiah is Jesus.” Simeon went from a young man, to a middle-aged man, to an old man, but he never doubted that God would keep His promise. He knew that God would keep His promise because God is faithful.

One day, Simeon was in the temple. What do you think the temple is? Kind of like the church and he was praying. After his prayer, he looked up and he saw a young lady and a young man and they had a baby. Who do you think that baby was? (children answering) That was Jesus. Nobody had to go over and say to Simeon, “Hey Simeon, guess what? There’s Jesus.” Simeon just knew in his heart that that was Jesus and he knew that God had kept His promise and before he died, he got to see Jesus.

We could change what Horton kept saying. We could change it to this: and it says, can you help me read it? I meant what I said and I said what I meant. God is faithful 100 percent. Do you think God wants us to be faithful? (children answering) Yes He does. Well, let’s pray.

Dear Heavenly Father (children repeating), help us to be faithful (children repeating). Thank you for being faithful to us (children repeating).