The Life of Jesus Advent Calendar - Day 11: Jesus Heals a Paralysed Man

Introduction

I had a lot of fun designing this stocking, and it makes a wonderful hands-on lesson for Sunday school too. I’ve even used an old cardboard box to create the house, with play figurines for the characters, and let the children lift off the “roof tiles” so they can lower the paralysed man down to Jesus.

Luke 5:17–26 is such an engaging piece of Scripture, and I hope creating this stocking will help you slow down and marvel at what is taking place:

• Jesus has the power to heal.

• The extraordinary faith of the paralysed man’s friends, who trusted Jesus enough to climb onto the roof and find a way - any way - to bring their friend to him.

• Jesus saw their faith, and because of this, he forgave the man’s sins.

• This wasn’t the healing they expected, but it was the healing every one of us needs most.

• Jesus then heals the man physically, demonstrating his authority to forgive sins.

• Those who witnessed it were filled with awe and glorified God.

Do we trust Jesus enough to bring to him our friends and family who seem beyond help? What kind of healing are we longing for on their behalf? And do we remember that their deepest need - just like ours - is to have their sins forgiven by their Redeemer? How do we respond when we see Christ at work in people's lives?

Assembling your stocking

You'll want to take a short moment before starting to work on this stocking to just figure out how everything will fit together.

It's up to you whether you would like to give the house a darker interior as I have done, or if you'd like to stitch it straight onto the stocking, so the red shows through as the background.

Remember to take care with how you draw around your templates

If you'd like to give the house a darker interior, cut out two of the house shapes in two different coloured felts, and make the darker one slightly smaller than the lighter one. Remember to be careful with your templates - to avoid pencil marks showing on the front, you will want to flip your templates.

Whether you're giving the house an interior or not, you will then want to cut out the window and door shapes from the lighter house shape. There is a diagram in my template showing how everything fits together, and suggested stitching marks.

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I actually start by stitching the house down before I add the characters inside the house, just to help hold things in place. I use pins to help me guide where my stitches need to go to give the house its 3D appearance. Once the house is partially stitched down, I can lift up the walls and tuck inside Jesus and the crowds.

I used the crowd template to cut out two crowds - one in black and one in a dark grey. I cut the black one in half and put one half in each of the windows of the house, to make it look like it was crowded inside. In hindsight, they were a little small, so you might want to cut an additional one in black if you don't want to me fiddling around too much.

I stitch Jesus in place with my usual backstitch, and make his face point up towards the ceiling, as he notices the roof tiles being pulled back. I then stitch around the windows and doors to make them look like they're lined with bricks, which helps hold the black crowds in place. Then, I stitch the dark grey crowd over the door, to show that the house really was too full to enter for the paralysed man and his friends.

I would then cut out your three friends and the paralysed man, and stitch these onto the roof. I used the same colour felts as I've used for many of the disciples, but used a contrasting orange thread for all of them, to make them distinct from the disciples, and also unite them as a group of friends.

It's up to you how many roof tiles you would like to cut out. Even five to seven would be plenty, to be placed in two piles either side of the paralysed man once he's lying on the roof. I used around twelve tiles all in all, but you really don't need that many. That was more for the little stop motion video I did, which you can view on my social channels.

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