Read Matthew 28:16-20 with your family.

Every Gospel has a slightly different way of telling the story of Jesus, and in Matthew’s Gospel we read that the women told all Jesus’ followers to return immediately to Galilee, and that’s what they did. The verses we read today are the very last words in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus tells his followers to go out and tell everyone about God’s promises. They are to baptize people in the name of God the Father, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

Now, this was hundreds of years before the church figured out how the three parts of God fit together, but they knew that God loved them, and that Jesus taught them everything they needed to know, and that the Holy Spirit would help them with anything they had to do in their lives.

And they knew that the best thing in the world to share with both friends and strangers is that God loved them, that they were perfect just the way they were. Everyone today is also perfect and loved by God.