We all carry our own burdens. This activity will help students process those burdens and how their faith can help lift the load they are carrying.

For this activity you can use either use smooth river stones from a craft store, or you can use slips of paper (rocks are better for the illustration of our burdens being heavy). Give everyone a rock or two, and have them write down something they carry that weighs them down e.g., shame, hatred, feelings of inferiority, etc. Once they finish, they will come and place their stones in a bag.

Once everyone has placed their stone in the bag, ask students if they’d like to share what it was that they put in the bag. After they share, invite them to pick up the bag. Explain how one rock doesn’t seem like all that much to carry, but when we start to pile on all the rocks the weight can start to become unbearable and even immobilizing.

The same is true for our burdens. Looking at them separately we start to think we can handle it on our own without the help of the God who keeps us. But once we pile every burden on our shoulders, we get crushed by the weight. Tell your students that they don’t need to carry the baggage. We have a God who has come to take it all away with what Jesus has done on the cross.

50 min​