How do you feel about this story?
I can tell you that it made me cross. To me it seemed woolly and stupid to allow them to misbehave and try to present it as some ‘spiritual activity’ because one of them managed to drag the word Sabbath from somewhere in their brain in order to try to get away with it. If I’d been leading the session I’d have stopped the plane-making and got that group back on task.
But there is a problem here. As Ronnie Lamont expresses in her feature on how children understand God , if we don’t really listen to children we miss the depth of what they are really saying about God. We can also easily miss the spiritual depth to what a child is doing and write it off as bad behaviour and stop it.
There seems to me to be a sense of mischief and play had by children that naturally connects them with God. It's almost as if they have sneaked off to be with God by not joining in with our activities.
Let me give you an example from my own work with children. A few years ago during an all age service the whole church were supposed to be colouring in animal masks to help with our Noah’s Ark theme (please never use this idea) and one of the children was sitting on the floor under a table. This wasn’t unusual for her and she had made it clear to us that she wasn’t a Christian and didn’t really want to come to church. We were very used to having to work hard with her in Sunday school. As I wasn’t running the session I pretended not to notice and as no one else noticed (or they were all dealing with it as I was). She got away with it, remained under the table and never did colour in a mask. Perhaps I should have done something; she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be. On reflection I am so glad that I didn’t.
Later on, the church leader paused the service to read a child’s poem. It was beautiful; the author told of how she had just moved schools and was finding it tough, but no matter how alone she felt at school, she knew that God was with her and that she was never really alone. And where was this poem written? You guessed it; under a table by someone who should have been colouring a mask.
Sometimes we need to listen to children, ask open questions and hear what they’re really saying. Sometimes we just need to get out the way and let God meet with them on their terms. That morning I learnt that lesson in a way I’ll never forget.
