Though your sins be as scarlet

Today I taught the primary lesson for Sharing Time.  We talked about repentance and how the Savior takes away our sins.  I had a glass of water that they could all see.  I added a drop of food coloring, and they watched it swirl until the water was blue.

When you sin, your soul is stained.  As one of the kids said, "It's blue because you're sad."

Then, I added bleach to the water.  The water got lighter, but it was still kind of blue.  So then I talked about the steps of repentance.  When we sin, we feel sorry.  Then we ask for forgiveness and try to make it right.  Finally, we don't do that sin anymore.

I let the kids come up with some examples. "It's like if you accidentally break something your mom really needs, and she comes in and asks, 'who broke this?' And you say, 'not me,' that's lying.  And you should repent.  Because lying makes you sad.  So then you say sorry to your mom and pray 'please forgive me' and then you have to tell your mom the truth.  Because if you lie, then you have to tell the truth.  And don't lie next time."

And Pea offered this insight:  "And if you break the counter on purpose, you should be sorry.  And you'll have to fix it, because that's how you make it right."  I'll remember that next time I feel the desire to break the counter.

By the time the kids were done talking, the water was totally clear.  I held it up and said, "That's right.  Our water was blue from when we sinned, but then we added the bleach, which is like Jesus.  Now, there's no blue left in our water.  It's just like we never put any blue in at all.  When we repent, it's like we never sinned."

And I got an uproar of "that's so cool!"  That's right.  Jesus IS cool.

And when we got home from church, Pea told daddy all about the "Spirit-mint" (experiment) we did today at church.  "Mom put some blue in the water, because when you sin you get sad, and then when you add  (aside to me--what was Jesus again? ) when you add bleach, it goes away!"

I'll take that.