Make a sand tray. Get a long pasteboard tube and paint it black inside and out. Bury it in the sand so that only the opening is visible. Cover the sand all round it with a layer of beautiful moss to represent grass, with here and there a branch of evergreen to represent trees, and with bunches of flowers placed in skillfully hidden vases. Fashion little winding roads through the moss. Insert here and there bits of mirror to represent lakes and rivers. Make the whole as attractive as possible.
Direct the children’s attention, one by one, to the beauties of the imaginary country you have laid out before them, and then turn to the black tunnel, up to the mouth of which you have run one of your sand roads. What would the children think of a man who should deliberately leave all the lovely things outside and choose to walk in this black tunnel? Why, inside there is nothing but thorns (draw out some dead, prickly plant), and stones, and ugly crawling things (draw out these—a toy snake may represent the “crawling things”).
Yet here comes a man walking along this lovely road (use a toy man—or even a spool may be made to answer), enjoying everything beautiful he sees and hears. And look! he is walking right into the tunnel.
Children, that tunnel is sin. Have you not noticed how black the world is when you do anything wrong? When you say a cross word, or tell a lie, or cheat at school, or disobey your mother? Have you noticed that? Well, it was because you were just getting into this tunnel.
How can you get out? Christ can let you out. He is the only one that can. If you pray to him, he will break right into this great, black tunnel, (the tube has been cut in two and you break it across at this point), and he can let in the light and let out the man. Do you remember what Christ called himself? “I am the Light of the world,” he said. This is the way he is the Light of the world. “Walk in the light.”