We played a clip for the children to watch from the movie "The Miracle Worker". I had never seen this movie, but I'm sure that it impacted the children because it had a great impact on me also to think about the great love that God gave to us. This clay cartoon video showed Jesus as he was walking with his cross through the streets, as he was dying on the cross and when he came back to life and showed himself to Mary and the others. This was something that I had never thought deeply about before yesterday. People who had not seen Jesus, before he revealed himself to so many people, must have thought that Mary was crazy. Sometimes, our faith seems crazy, but there are so many clues in our faith that point to the truth. I thought that the video depicted these ideas in a way that the children could understand and grasp.
After the video the leaders did a skit on the ways that Jesus speaks directly to us in so many ways. When we cannot get something out of our minds, God could be telling us that we need to pray about those things. I think it was great that these children are learning to speak to God and sit in his presence at such a young age. This was something that I never fully learned (and I am still learning) just to pray in a way that I am not asking God for anything, but rather just having a friendship, a relationship, and sitting in his lap and being in his magnificent presence.
C.S. Lewis talks about this in one of his essays in the book "God in the Dock" called "Work and Prayer". He talks about how it is important to ask and present requests to God, which is something the leaders at St. Aldates are teaching the children. At the end of class they had the children come and surround a couple of the children who asked for prayer. The leaders and the children surrounded the kids who needed prayer and asked God for comfort, for healing, and to show his mighty presence. Also Rachel and the other leaders are teaching their kids something powerful in, as Lewis writes having "communion or intercourse with Him". The kids laid peacefully on the floor and were asked to think and pray. Some of them talked to leaders and myself about visions that they saw, stories that they thought of either in the Bible or in their own experiences, and some even saw vivid images that in my opinion was the Lord speaking to their hearts.
One child, who was extremely loud in class on a normal basis saw a vision of three candles on top of a bell. The candles represented the Trinity and he did not understand what the bell represented. He knew that God was trying to tell him that he was supposed to tell others about Jesus, but could not fit the pieces together. Isaac, one of the interns, was talking with the young boy about some of the things the bell could symbolize. Bells are loud, everyone in the town hears the bells, bells announce something such as the time or that someone is getting married, they are important in cities. I just thought this was the neatest thing that the Lord was speaking to him in a way that he felt and was real!
After they each had a time to shut their eyes and pray, the kids had the opportunity to express the feelings and emotions they had from this experience. They were given the chance to read a story about what they had just heard in the Bible, paint a picture of a vision they just saw, play with play-dough and make a sculpture of what they just heard, or color a picture. Although this is a somewhat non-conventional way of having children's church (or as our culture sees having children's church), I believe this was a powerful way of letting the little children come to God and sit in his presence.
As the semester is coming to an end, I have started to think about how much I am going to miss St. Aldates and being a part of this church. The people have encouraged me and I have been stretched and have learned so much from the faith of the little children and from the belief of the leaders who spend their time loving and teaching young kids.
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