In Raglan we’ve just finished our children’s holiday club. The place was transformed into an Egyptian fantasy world with home made but convincing pyramids and carefully copied hieroglyphics looking so mysterious but spelling out words of welcome. We had craft activities, lots of singing led by a little jazz band and sketches by a teenage drama group as well as plenty of adult help if only to get the refreshments ready – you need a lot of drinks for a big gang of children every day in the kind of weather we had last week.

All this effort was designed to help us tell the story of Joseph – he of the amazing technicolour dreamcoat. The main point we wanted to underline was how God had a good plan for the life of this Bible character and how he brought a positive outcome even from all the unfortunate experiences Joseph had to endure. These included murderous jealousy in family life, unjust accusations in the workplace and years in prison - all against a backdrop of famine not only in his country of exile but throughout the Middle East. There was a large scale refugee crisis even then so what’s happening over there today is depressingly familiar.

We helped the children to learn one Bible verse to underline this point about God’s plan. Joseph says to his brothers after an emotional reconciliation, ‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.’

The children lapped it up.  After all, we adults are not the only ones who can feel that things are falling apart; even in young lives there can be tension in the family and plenty of the best laid plans can go awry.  Whatever age we are, the terrifying storms of our everyday lives can fill us with such anxiety and events in places like Lebanon, Israel and the Palestian territories can perplex us even if we have a strong faith.  But we all need a message of hope and to say with Joseph that God has a good plan is hard to acknowledge at times, but something worth clinging onto.

The holiday club was a great success - many of the parents and grandparents were only too glad to have the children taken care of in the first week of the school holidays. I know that because I’m one of them and it’s good to begin the annual childcare ordeal fairly gently but it’s all over and what I need now is a plan to occupy the children until the schools go back.