I love working with children. I love playing games with them
and running around on the playground and making crafts while having the
silliest conversations. More than that though I love teaching them about God.
Half the people who will ever believe in Christ will do so
by the age of 12, and by the age of 9 their basic moral foundation has already
been formed. I love having the opportunity to teach these kids about who God is
and how much He loves them, because I know that it is so important that they
hear it early on. That being said, I have a really cool story to share of what
happened Sunday morning.
I was in the kindergarten and first grade classroom, and
there was one boy who was very squirrelly. He was playing at the Lego table
during worship and story time, so I walked over to him to ask him to join the
other kids. Every time I would try to bring him back to story time he would
jump to another activity or table. Eventually I decided to just sit and play
with him, and I thought that maybe God had something else for him that couldn’t
be found by sitting down for the story. We sat and played for a while, and I
got to have a great little conversation with him about everything from what it
means to worship God to what video game he likes best.
After the story ended it was time to go to small groups.
I was nervous that this boy wouldn’t want to go to the small
group, but he was surprisingly very excited about it so we went and sat down at
a table. The activity was a simple connect the dots sheet, which he finished in
about 30 seconds. My immediate thought was Oh
no, now I have to find some other way to keep him occupied so that he doesn’t
start playing with the toys. He was just starting to get up to play again
when he turned around and said “Hey, a book!” and pointed to the Bible sitting
on the table.
I sort of chuckled and said, “Yeah, do you know what book
that is?”
“No, what is it?”
“Oh,” I said, sort of surprised. “It’s a Bible.”
“What’s a Bible?” he asked.
I got to sit and talk with this boy about the Bible, how God
wrote us all these stories about things that really happened so that we could
know Him better. I told him that every story in the Bible helps us to see how
much God loves us and wants to be with us. He then started flipping back and
forth between pages, asking me what was on every page. I would paraphrase what
was on one page or read a couple sentences, and then he would flip to another
page and then another and another.
We did this for about ten minutes. Sometimes
there were pictures on the pages – I mean real pictures like “This is what
Jerusalem looks like,” not cartoon pictures. He stopped on one page and pointed
to a picture of a whip and asked me what it was. Then he pointed to a word
beneath it (flogging) and asked what it said, which was proceeded by him asking
what flogging means. My first thought was Great,
this kid is going to go home and tell his parents that he learned what flogging
means at church. Instead though he looked at me and said “I want a Bible!”
I told him that I would love for him to have a Bible, and
that I was almost positive that if he asked his mom and dad for a Bible they
would love to get it for him. Church got out about 10 minutes later, and his
parents came in and saw us sitting together flipping through the Bible. They
asked him if he had been reading the Bible with me and he immediately said “I
want a Bible!” His parents both looked a little shocked at first and said, “A
Bible of your very own?” He said yes and when the parents said they would love
to go get one for him, I saw his face light up as if it were Christmas morning.
In fact he even said, “Really!? Where do we even get a Bible?” As he left I
heard his parents telling him where they could go get one and discussing what
Bible they should get.
I was so happy that I got to see that moment, to see a child’s
eyes light up at the idea of getting a Bible. This child hasn’t even started
kindergarten yet, and already he is excited about reading God’s word. Almost
just as exciting for me was watching him have this conversation with his
parents. My hope in ministry is always to see the parents as the ones raising
their kids spiritually, so I loved seeing their eyes light up as well when
their kid said he wanted a Bible. I love that they get to experience getting a
Bible together as a family, and all the conversations that will stem from that.
This moment reminded me that God pursues even the littlest of children, and I
am so excited to see how this little boy’s faith begins to grow.
