A Book to Talk About! Actually, Two! II

I'm reading and talking about New Testament Christianity by J.B. Phillips. The book  Your God is Too Small is also a book worth reading and pondering especially in the context of working with children and youth. It forces us to take a second look at how we see God.

In New Testament Christianity, Phillips is looking at the New Testament and the early church, exploring themes he saw as he translated - surprisingly appropriate for the Christmas season. The nature and purpose of the God of the scriptures and His untainted Word are at the heart of his commentary.

His book isn't a how-to but he draws attention to mega-themes that effect how we think. He talks about God historically visiting a tiny dot in the universe for which we should be eternally humbled and grateful. He talks about faith as a muscle, the bridge between God's reality and our own reality - the reality of living in a physical, social, cognitive world. He talks about faith based on fact.

Then he talks about hope; not hope as wishful thinking or "pious hope" but again, hope based on fact, work, and God's realities. Faith and hope, as he describes them, are based on what is real and true of God's nature and God's purpose, even if we don't know or understand what that purpose is.

He briefly touches the historical context of the New Testament; how brightly the faith and hope of the early Christians shined in such a dark culture.  At one point he says, "To the pagan mind to take a man's life was to take his all, but to attack Christians by sword, torture, or the atrocities of the arena was to invite defeat. Even if you killed them they slipped through your fingers to be with their Lord for ever!" ( pg 48) I've read Eusebius. The historic account of the early church is incredulous - humbling and inspiring.

He ventures to say that the New Testament is more about faith than depravity.  He shares brilliant metaphors to explain how he understands the relationship between faith, hope, our actions, and God's. He ventures to explore the challenge of living in the world but not of the world - holding to the realities of both the physical and the spiritual (living, working, believing) knowing we're being prepared for the latter.

More to come. I'm about halfway through.

Why do these tiny adult books matter if I'm working with children? Children start off with a faith, hope, and love uncharacteristic of most adults. We are given charge (parents, teachers, friends, family) to nurture faith muscles, hope muscles, and the muscles of godly love. In order to set children up to succeed, they have to learn how to tap into the God of the Universe as revealed through Christ Jesus and His Holy Spirit in their day to day life. God help us if we give them what is counterfeit and set them up to fail.

Sometimes we get so caught up in things that don't matter that we miss what really does matter. Check out  1 Corinthians 13:13.

The scriptures tell us of true faith, hope, love founded on the reality of Who God is and His own eternal purpose. We have an obligation to tend and grow what is true to the God of the scriptures - faith, hope, love that will last a lifetime and beyond, not counterfeits that can't stand up to life in this world. Can I tell you where the lines are? No, I've just started pondering this.

How did the early church know they were on target? Their faith, hope, and love stood the test of the world they lived in. God's reality became their reality. Their eyes were always on the Father and their lives and actions reflected that love in tangeable ways that even the world could see. They were different. The God of Creation, the God of the Universe, walked with them.

Are you keeping up?

I don't consider myself techno-savy but I have family members working with kids, teens and families. Sent this to them. Forgot about you!

I assume that if you're an active parent or if you're currently working with children or teens, you keep up on this kind of info. Check this out.

Sidebar: I am not condoning the sites or the advertising and I apologize in advance. I have no desire to offend. But the app info is important. You can be the Navy seal rushing in to retrieve valuable information.

Who is the enemy? Would you recognize the spirit if you were face to face?

More important, can your kids recognize and differentiate between "friend" and "foe"? Do they have the strength and courage to say "Yes" to friend and "No" to foe? How do we train them?

End of Sidebar.

Here's the app info:

Scary apps that you need to know about. For parents, guardians, teachers, anyone with children using computers or smart phones who are in your care...

This site, as well. This one is a bit more tame.

"wise as serpents and innocent as doves."

Probably the makings for a whole curriculum but here is one article.

[NY times article on sexual predators who target children] This is about men and boys but it applies to either gender as predator or victim.

If you're a parent, if you work with children, if your older kids babysit, etc, etc ... this is an important read ...  Not to make you paranoid ...  but to make us ever-vigilant. It's not strangers we need to worry about.
 
It's too obvious to say "take note when relationships become secretive or inappropriate" unless you're too busy to notice.

Stay involved and vigilant.

Keep listening.  Ask questions.

No secrets! We used to tell our kids the only secret from mom & dad is a Christmas or birthday present.

This may sound at odds with what many Christian parents believe - but teach your children to say, "No!" There's a time and a place for it. If your child never says "No," or can't say no when they need to - worry!

Know your kids. Know where they are, who they're with - even as teachers - know where every child is, who they're with and what they're doing - every moment that they're in your care.  I like open public spaces. I like classroom and office doors with windows.
 
I know that in this day and age most churches have policies in place to protect children. Bravo! Nobody wants a witch hunt or to keep kids from rich friendships with trustworthy teens and adults of in the extended family of a faith community but, sad to say, there are sheep and there are wolves.

Teachers have a responsibility to either give parents (and children) information they need or to point them to those who can; not to be paranoid but to be "wise as serpents and innocent as doves."

The Stories of Scripture: Adding to the Experience

I've posted about this before.

As you read the stories of scripture and passages to remember consider that people were day-to-day familiar with the natural images and analogies you find. It added to their understanding of the story - a teaching and learning tool in God's hand.

If you aren't already familiar with those natural images find a way! Look ahead at the stories you'll cover this season. Make a list. What pre-story scouting can you do to add to the sensory experience for your kids and ultimately to their understanding of who God is.

Maybe your kids are more familiar day-to-day with some of the images than you are. Give them opportunities to share.

Ask your kids: "What do you know about lilies in a field?" A sparrow? Sheep?

Grape vines

Rain on a farmers field

Waves on great lakes

a desert

dry seasons

floods

We know God by all the names He gives us in the scriptures but, especially as children, we learn to know God as Creator.

We don't even have to over-explain and understand all the ins and outs. Sometimes it's enough to just stand in awe of Him and all that His hands have done. Sometimes it's enough to just say "Wow!"

Nursery

Sitting with my parents at their church Sunday. They were looking for nursery volunteers promising "no crying babies". That part was intended as a joke.

So I got thinking, of course: When we care for infants, some people seem to just have the "touch." They're better at calming them than others. Maybe skill or technique. Maybe it's the age and experience of the caregiver. Maybe a baby just "knows me" or "likes me!"

But I got thinking about visual, auditory, kinesthetic learners and I'm wondering if a child's preference for visual, auditory, kinesthetic/tactile, olfactory stimuli show up before they're even pre-schoolers when they're still infants. Beyond the comfort of the familiar, I wonder if some babies find smiles or mobiles more calming than sounds and singing or visa versa. Or whether some babies find touch, fleece, or smells more soothing than sights and sounds.

Maybe there's research out there, I haven't looked. Just wondering if, when trying to calm a crying baby - after we've exhausted the familiar (and the possibility of colic) - if babies have sensory preferences.

We wish each other Happy Holidays or a Merry Christ-filled Christmas . . .

So sad for so many, this season. Maybe for more people than we know every Christmas season, but this year, the grief is media-public.

Words of comfort ... There are many faces of comfort in these verses... a word study . . .

Read them in context...

Liturgy boxes! Whether or not you use an actual liturgy 
or not, great idea! Play with it! Make it work for your own faith community!

The other day I was trying to find an author who's name I couldn't remember which makes the task rather challenging...he wrote about Genesis and creation from some new angles. Whatever it was that I read at the time, I was particularly drawn to his looking at "dominion" as caring for as opposed to absolute dictatorship but alas . . we don't know who it was.

So as I was searching...I found it interesting (apart from catch words, fads, and media hype) that there is an ever growing focus on our relationship as believers to the natural world. On line, anyway, it seems to fall into the ecology/environmental venue. I shouldn't be surprised. This generation of  parents is more relational, more holistic, more focused on networking and community and being individuals with a role to play but part of something bigger . . . It's just interesting how we work through our faith with global issues....

As an aside...there's a forward going around about an old lady who didn't bring her cloth bag to the grocery store but it gives a rather unique, and perhaps comforting for some of us, perspective the stewardship and "recycling" of the last generation...ok...my generation ...read it before you delete it...

Check out worshipping with children.

Friendly Strangers

From one of my favorite dog sites, "My Smart Puppy". Maybe my favorite. I thought this article was about kids and dogs but it isn't. It is a very well-conceived game to play with your kids to teach them the proper response to a friendly stranger. As a dog-trainer, teacher, parent, and once a child. . . "Read this!" This is WONDERFUL! Sarah's a great trainer!

Frankly, sadly, this advise should probably also apply to child, teen, anyone who asks your child to go do something without asking you first. If you are a child, even if another child asks you to go with them, you stop and go ask mom or dad.

One of my favorite Psalms: Psalm 139. . . when you think toddlers, think "fearfully & wonderfully made..." When you think teens or pre-adolescent. When you think about individuals.

So, my daughter and I were talking again about her memories. She's taken a long journey from faith through other things and back to faith and the scriptures. She was talking about things that shaped her faith. She can also tell you lots of things that totally turned her off to church.

We were talking scripture this morning before she left and I'm reminded that when we dedicated her the pastor prayed over her (or prophesized) that she would be a woman of the Word. For most of her teen years and into early adulthood I failed to see that. She's only met that pastor once. We moved when she was a toddler. If she runs into him again I asked her share with him that God is answering his prayer. Would you be encouraged if someone came up to you and told you that you prayed for him/her 30 years ago and God answered your prayer?

Here is an exercise for leaders, childrens' ministers, parents...maybe everyone in your faith community. We'll call it child sensitivity training or maybe toddler sensitivity training. Ha! Most of us probably don't remember back this far and it's probably a good thing but...

What are your earliest memories of something faith or church related?  At home or alone? In church or with a group? How did it affect you?

Name five more specific situations or experiences that shaped your faith as a child. How old were you? Recall as much detail as you can. How can it help you better represent God to children?

I shared with you the finger game, the book.  Here's another one. (Both sets of grandparents and my parents all went to the same church). I sucked my thumb for more years than you care to know. I remember being carried by one of my parents (probably my dad) and saying good-by to people after a church dinner waving good-by with the rest of my hand.

The doing with my hands, the rhyme, the book, family, community - just a couple of memories. Try it.

I mentioned the article on the AOL news Rethinking The Bible As A Social Book (Jan 26, 2011). I mentioned all the comments and then I went back to really read (instead of skim) the article.

I find it interesting that so many people pounced on the word "modify". I agree whole-heartedly that we have no right to tamper with God's word. Maybe I'm just weird but it was all the other possibilities that caught my attention: "The apps makes it possible for readers to share their highlighted text from a book on Twitter or Facebook, along with their comments, related photos and videos. Private groups can also be created for more of a book-club feel" or on-line Bible study? What a wonderful opportunity to interact with and share the scriptures socially for kids in today's world. Should it take the place of face to face, no. It's something different ...

Like anything new, it's scary, yes, but also full of possibilities to be used or abused. Think about the good and the bad possibilities available to man when someone developed the wheel (before & after). Some of the grown-ups were early adopters, some not. Maybe the kids and teenagers had a riotous time. We don't know.  I bet the apostle Paul would have a field day today with a social Bible app . . . for better or for worse. I wonder if he'd condemn it or use it to great advantage... 

That was the part that jumped out at me -  potential for personal and social options for discussions, sharing, pondering the Word of God with personal visual and audio options for worship that you can share.  (my own interpretation) even with unbelievers. Maybe more appealing to, maybe common ground with unbelievers.

Having a tool out there with the capability to "modify" the scriptures is scary for sure. That particular possibility should give us that much more incentive to make sure our kids really know God's Word "as written" - what's there and what isn't...

Take a passage. Take a story. Change something. Start with the obvious and move to the more subtle. Change something and see if your kids catch it...Make it a game. How do you teach them to tactfully say to someone they love, "I don't think that's what the scriptures really say. Let's go look."

Lots to ponder at the Cory Center website.

But let's take it a step farther. Here's a challenge for you...

Did you ever search the scriptures for stories or passages about people who got mad at God? Who were they? Why were they mad at God? Did God respond? If so, how?

Did you ever search the scriptures for stories about people who were grieving? Can you think of stories or passages in the scriptures about people who were very very sad? Why were they sad? What happened? Did God respond? If so, how?

Today we have sports. Are there sports in the scriptures? If so, what? If not, what did people do to stay "fit"? What was fitness all about? How did they balance and fill up their lives? What would a typical day or week or year look like?

Not looking for right or wrong answers here. Looking for observations. Read and search God's stories for the obvious, not for some deep dark secret. Use your eyes and ears, your mind and your heart. See what God will show you...Do it with your church leadership. Do it with grown-ups or parents. Do it with teens. Do it with children.  See what God will show you...

ponder with me

I'd like to propose that as the Virtual becomes more and more the world that children become most familiar with that sensory, tactile, kinesthetic learning and association, human interaction with the natural world and healthy relationships will become that much more important for a child's whole wellness.

I'd like to propose that as more and more kids spend more and more time away from their nuclear family that exploring the relationships between child, family, care-givers, and community with all the "socialization" pluses and minuses will be worth exploring...

Many cultural elements over the last quarter century are new and a bit daunting...but if there's "nothing new under the sun" how do the scriptures lead and guide us through?

What if the images of the scriptures that we take for granted (and generations before have taken for granted) disappear from our culture over time? . . .  father, mother, sparrow, bread, lily, grain, sheep, grass, water, stings, horns, ...so many things we take for granted in a God-created world that may or may not survive as our man-created world continues to grow...what do you think?

Are we obligated to keep all the things that God created and those things referenced in the scriptures alive in our world? If people stop eating bread or stop eating meat will that make those passages of scripture irrelevant? If farms disappear will that make the agricultural images of scripture irrelevant? What about commercial fishing? What about time spent outside observing something like a sparrow?

I'm just asking ... I suggest we think about it now instead of turning around later, wishing we had...

New Year's

Ecclesiastes 3 is one of my favorites. Do we teach this to kids? How do we do it? Probably mostly by example. There are parts of this passage that it's easy to have issues with ... even parts that break the commandments but we don't think of it that way. Take the 10 commandments and go through the stories of scripture and see how often the rules were broken and ponder. Who decides whether it's time for this or time for that? How do you decide?

Psalm 8 

Revelation 21:1-6a So much of Revelation is worship!! That was once a revelation to me! This is a neat picture of Immanuel "God with us." Every time you wipe away tears remember His promise.

Matthew 25:31-46 Another powerful picture. Perhaps a picture of the kingdom of God coming to earth...perhaps a picture of the Holy City descending, the Bride, the New Heaven, the New Earth . . .God with us. . .  My husband is very very good at this kind of giving so the kids grew up seeing this modeled often. Challenging to our faith and risky when kids want to do it, too...

Pondering lectionary passages

So I pulled some scriptures out of the lectionary and posted them below only because those particular verses jumped out at me for whatever reason or I saw something I hadn't noticed before...

If you use the lectionary in your church or want the fun of using it for devotions. . . This is The Revised Common Lectionary at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library. You'll see the year and the link on the left when you click.

Go looking for kids. You can use Bible stories that tie to the season. You can look for children in the text (reading it in context) or ask where were they? How did these words affect their parents, them, their community?  Look for promises to multi-generations. Look for imagery that is particularly appealing to kids or imagery that children can relate to. If children can't relate to the imagery and the ideas are age appropriate, (branches growing from a stump for instance) what can you do to add that experience to your kids so they have a point of reference? Do you see the passages about peace and being teachable? Don't you love the imagery of beating swords into plows and farm tools? Do you know a soldier turned farmer? A tree specialist? Do you know a metal worker?

I'm not talking long and complicated. Think snapshots in a big album, depending on the ages of your kids. Sure it's good to know the family and the stories and back stories that go with the snap shots but as kids grow you share a little more and a little more. And some day the whole picture of their Loved One makes sense.

Enjoy the season!

Toddlers Again...

I need to seriously revise something in this post. In case anyone misunderstood, it wasn't my intention to reference the devil tempting Jesus in the wilderness following Jesus' baptism as a story about baptism for toddlers. My intention was to reference the part about the Spirit descending on Jesus like a dove. Even that may be realistically out of the reach of toddlers. Watching a baptism in church. That's concrete. Water is concrete. Being in the water, going under and coming back up is concrete. The Holy Spirit healing you when you're sick is concrete. You could tell the story using a paper dove with wings that flap or tell a simplified version of the baptism story with puppets or dolls. You might even be able to come up with a finger play if there isn't one already. Remember that each story or church activity is an opportunity to introduce new vocabulary (words) to toddlers & preschoolers especially if you have older toddlers who can talk: Jesus, water, baptism, dove. The Holy Spirit isn't neccessarily concrete to toddlers & preschoolers. The devil isn't concrete. Which brings us to why I even went back to that post.

Someone searched "explaining devil to toddlers". The works of God are concrete. The works of the Holy Spirit (healing) is concrete but I don't know that toddlers make that association. The dove is a concrete God- given symbol for the Holy Spirit. Do you see a God-given concrete symbol for the devil? The serpent? Good angels, bad angels, maybe but I still think even that may be confusing or completely off the radar for a toddler.

I would rather spend the first 6 years of a child's life teaching them to be responsible and accountable for their own actions and about making choices, making good choices. "Keeping the commandments," if you will.

Love God. What do we do that says we love God? What does that look like to a toddler or preschooler?
Love your neighbor as yourself. What do we do to love our neighbor as ourself. What does that look like to a toddler or preschooler? Go through all 10 commandments. Make them toddler/preschool simple and ask yourself what does doing this right look like to a toddler or preschooler?

Have no other gods before Me.

Don't make an image or bow down and worship anything in heaven, on earth, or in the waters below.

Don't misuse God's name.

Remember the Sabbath & keep it holy. Six days we work. On the 7th day we rest from our work.

“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you." (My kids used to hear that a lot for the promise attached.)

Don't murder.

Don't take someone else's husband or wife.

Don't take anything that isn't yours.

Don't lie about someone.

Don't want something that belongs to your neighbor, (to your friend).

Those are the 10 rules God gave his people. Jesus summed them up into two.  Take responsibility for your actions.

Search the scriptures for references to the devil. Look for the stories attached. Who were those stories for? Is there a God-given biblical picture or image attached?  Did it strike fear into the hearts of men? Children?

My mother-in-law was an art teacher. She loved kids. She was also very involved in her Episcopal church. She'd grown up Russian orthodox so she was familiar with iconography. Much of her artwork for her church was simple, clear, clean line & color. When she died we found ourselves with a library of art books, among them a book of art depicting the life of Christ. Another was a book full of artistic and cultural renditions of the devil. I'm only bringing this up because children need concrete association and we often draw on visual images but they aren't all biblical. So before you go scaring little children needlessly, go back to scripture. Scripture talks about a healthy fear of the Lord. It also talks about cowardice not getting us into the kingdom of heaven.

Someday, if I understand scripture correctly, we will all face our Maker and give account. For Christ's sake and for the sake of the children in your care, prayrefully ponder and search the scriptures before you conjure up scary images that will be hard for kids to put aside when they grow up and into greater understanding. Consider what's age appropriate. Consider those words and understanding that are concrete for the very young. What's in the scriptures for them? Look before you leap. Go search the scriptures like the Bereans and "see if these things be so."

Christmas is a wonderful time to pull very young children into the scriptures. A mom & dad, a Baby, animals, angels, kings, a donkey, camels, sheep, shepherds, stars, songs, treasure, smells, things to touch...keep going!

I seem to keep seeing orange, ha ha. I don't know anything about it but here's a little info if you're interested. People breaking out of their boxes & learning to hear one another and love one another despite their differences is a good thing...

Doctors' orders! Enjoy the outside world God created ...even if it's currently hiding under a white blanket...