Used to Think, Now I Know
Last Sunday (1/22) the children participated in a “One-Room Schoolhouse” in the Parish House. Fifteen children aged 3-11 joined together to hear the same Bible story that the congregation was hearing in the Meeting House.
In the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman, Jesus has a “used to think, now I know” moment. Through an encounter with a not-Jewish woman in which Jesus and the woman speak to each other in riddles, Jesus realized that his message of love and justice was not only for the Jewish people, as he “used to think” but was really meant for everyone, everywhere. Knowing that, he went forth with new understanding.
Many of the children were able and willing (which speaks to their comfort with and trust of the group) to share a “used to think, now I know” moment from their own experience. Through the course of our conversation we covered several topics:
- that Jesus the Christmas baby is the same person as Jesus the grown-up man in this and other stories;
- that Jesus the grown-up man “went about doing good” (as Peter said of him) by helping sick people feel better and sad people feel more hopeful;
- that because Jesus often told stories or spoke in riddles in order to teach something people then and now have to think about the story and work out the message for themselves;
- that many of Jesus’s stories told people to be good and kind to everyone, not just the people that they liked, or that looked like them or liked the same things they did, but everyone.
We reviewed Bible stories from the last few weeks, inviting volunteers to act out the story of Moses leading the people out of Egypt and Jacob and Esau quarreling over Isaac’s blessing and later reconciling. I asked the children to begin thinking about which parts of these stories and our conversations they’d like to share with the congregation during the Time with the Children on February 5.
We also had a children’s worship in which we sang hymn #188 Come, Come Whoever You Are, lit our chalice, and observed our sharing ritual which involves placing a stone in a bowl of water. Quite a number of “shares” involved looking forward to that afternoon’s Big Football Game, often including (not surprisingly) a prediction for a hometown win.
We ended our morning together with a special treat of cocoa, conversation and drawing.
