A story on the theme of Mark 5.21-43 

Theme: We learn about God’s advocacy for us from Jesus’ encounter with Jairus

Change the names and genders and parental configurations as works best for your context.

Maria was getting in trouble with her teacher -- all the time. When her room was doing math problems in class, Maria was always the last one to finish. The whole class had to wait for her to catch up. However, Maria being last wasn’t the real problem. It was that she was always talking to Ray, the boy who sat next to her. Her teacher couldn’t help but notice. Her teacher thought if she stopped talking to Ray, she would get her work done on time.

She was upset that her teacher was upset with her. She said that she wasn’t talking with Ray, but that Ray was talking with her. He always started the talking. At first her teacher thought this was just an excuse. Ray got his work done, but Maria didn’t. 

Then her teacher heard Maria’s explanation. Maria said that she didn’t think Ray could read the numbers in the math problems on the board and so he kept interrupting her to ask what the numbers were. Ray was very fast at math and after Maria told him what the problem was, he was so quick that he was already asking about the next problem before Maria could work on the last problem.

Maria couldn’t help helping Ray because she had been reading stories from her Bible about how Jesus helped people who couldn’t help themselves and she thought that her helping Ray was just like Jesus helping helping people who couldn’t help themselves and she wanted to act like Jesus.

Of course, Maria couldn’t get her work done. She couldn’t start until Ray had already finished. When her teacher found this out, she thanked Maria for helping Ray and she had a talk with Ray.

About a week later, Ray came to class with glasses on. It turned out that that he couldn’t see the numbers on the board because he needed glasses. And for a while, Maria was his glasses.