Meanwhile, we took the littles to church with us yesterday. After collecting them from Sunday School, we crammed them into our (usually roomy) Malibu for the ride home. Get the visual here - a 7, a 5, and a 3-year-old sitting cheek to cheek. So by default they're touching each other BEFORE they even start touching each other! Trying to avoid the inevitable, I started asking them questions. Lexi enthusiastically said, "My class was GREAT today!" I was a little surprised - she is usually pretty reserved. So I asked her what she learned about ... "The Holy Spirit!" she said.
Well, I immediately gave mental kudos to the brave souls that were willing to tackle the Holy Spirit with first graders! Then I thought, hmmm, I probably should ask for more information before I'm TOO impressed, right? So here's how it went:
Me: "Who is the Holy Spirit?"
Lex: "He's God!"
Me: "How can HE be God? God is God."
Lex: "He is! Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit are all God. There's three of them, but they're all one too, you can't understand it but it's just true."
Me: "You're right ... but God lives in heaven, so where does the Holy Spirit live?"
Lex: "Inside me."
Me: "Inside you? Why?"
Lex: "To guide my path, to guide me every day!"
WOW. Yep, I'm seriously impressed with the Sunday school teacher, the curriculum, the staff, whoever and whatever put yesterday's lesson together in a way that sent her home with TRUTH LIKE THIS! Wow.
(an aside ... throughout this whole conversation, there is a running commentary from Callie, whom I repeatedly shush because this is important stuff we're talking about)
Then Mason: "Well, 'Bobby' (not his real name) said somethin' to me that I didn't agree with."
It's Mason, right? So I'm expecting something like, "He said spiderman has wings." Nope - "He said the Holy Spirit was the devil!"
Me: "Well, you're right to disagree - that isn't true. What do you think?"
Mason: "I think the devil's a serpent."
Lexi: "He used to be an angel but he wanted to be like God so God threw him out of heaven. But I think he can be a serpent."
So here's my invitation to give them the age-appropriate version of Creation and The Fall (Genesis 3). I told them the story of the devil (as a serpent) giving Eve the apple she wasn't supposed to eat, and that when she and Adam made the choice to eat it they disobeyed God. I told them what the results were ... why it mattered ... how their own little world is changed because of that bite.
Mason: "But what if the serpent cut off an apple from the tree they weren't sposed to eat from and glued it onto the tree they COULD eat from, then gave them that apple they weren't sposed to eat but they didn't know it? What would happen then?"
Uh ... ok got it. "Well, then it would have been a trick and they wouldn't have CHOSEN to disobey God, so that's different. What's important, though, is what DID happen, and that it happened because they didn't obey God."
Lexi: "Besides, MASON, that could never happen anyway because a serpent doesn't have ARMS!!"
And the final act ... Callie ... "Nini, Nini, is it my turn ta talk? My talk now? Can I talk?"
OK Callie - it's your turn. What did you want to say?
Callie: "Umm .... ummmm .... Nini? My fingernails need paint."
Mind-blowing and hilarious 15 minute drive home. God is good, all the time, and oh how I love those littles!
1 comment:
Hi! Im so glad to see you have a blog! I don't trust people that don't blog:)
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