How Can I Keep From Singing: Five Hymns from "Glory to God" to Use with Children

When I was a young child, I was part of a very small choir at our church called the Seraph choir. Four little girls with older siblings who were a part of the regular children and youth choir. Both choirs met on Saturday mornings (those were the days), and we would learn new music and generally work on our music skills. 

At one point our choir director (the assistant organist at our church) told us that she noticed on Sunday mornings, as she processed into the sanctuary with the choir, that we (us four little girls) were not singing along with the congregational hymns.

To encourage us to sing with the congregation, she started teaching us every Saturday morning the hymns that we would sing the next morning in worship. I am pretty sure that this one simple addition to our very simple children’s choir experience deeply affected my life. It developed my love not just for hymns but for congregational singing. It exposed me to some of the classic melodies of the Christian tradition as well as some of the most essential theological vocabulary of the faith. All starting at 6 years old. 

Nothing is Lost

Several weeks ago our friend and pastor lost her first pregnancy to a miscarriage. It had been a difficult pregnancy up to that point already, and so the entire community was walking closely with her and her husband expectantly towards the birth of their son. 

It obviously continues to be incredibly sad for them and their family as they grieve not just for the life of the child, but for all of the potential and promise that the child held within him. 

When I told my son what had happened, he was sad and yet relieved when he found out that Kirsten was okay. He told me that he was actually thankful when I explained what had happened, since he knew that sometimes when bad things happen to babies the mother also dies. Of course, it is his pastor whom he has the relationship with, and so she was his greatest concern. Even though he had been excited to welcome this new baby (who was potentially going to share his birthday), it was never really all that real for him. 

After a few weeks, Kirsten and her husband Justin decided to hold a simple memorial service for their son - Joseph Michael - so that they could recognize his very brief life and God’s love and care for him in his death. 

Moments in the Life of Jesus: 5 Things (out of 100) That Your Child Should Know Before Confirmation Class

In Confirmation Class a primary objective is for students to affirm their faith in Jesus Christ. The liturgy that we use on Confirmation Sunday reflects just that.

Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world?

I do.

Who is your Lord and Savior?

Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.

Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple obeying his word and showing his love?

I will.

Will you be a faithful member of this congregation, share in its worship and ministry through your prayers and gifts, your study and service and so fulfill your calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?

I will.

It took me a couple of years to figure out that I needed to do a better job prepping students as they prepared to answer these questions - certainly they are nervous standing in front of the entire congregation. There is also some kind of weird thing that happens when you expect 10 teenagers to respond spontaneously and in unison. Everyone expects the other to be the loudest voice, I think. 

And so as we prepared and practiced for worship, we went over the questions and answers and in particular their answer to “Who is your Lord and Savior?” For some reason it took a few tries for the answer to just roll off their tongues. 

What Wondrous Love is This?

I am reposting this reflection from 2012 on how we talk about the death of Christ with our children. As we move through this Holy Week, may it serve as an encouragement for all of us who will sit in a pew next to a child this Friday.

~

I can’t tell you how many times I have been forwarded the following joke:

Little Timmy was struggling with his math schoolwork, to the point that his parents had enlisted tutors and taken other extreme measures. Their final decision was to enroll him in a Catholic school to see if greater discipline might help the situation.

Timmy came home from school the first day vowing to redouble his efforts in math from now on. When his parents asked him what happened at school to change his attitude, he told them that after seeing that guy nailed to the plus sign at the school, he knew that he needed to take math more seriously.

While this could actually turn into a reflection on sending your child to a religious school with absolutely no background on the basics of Christianity, instead it provides a helpful starting point for my own inner wrestling with how we have discussions with our children (at different ages and stages in their faith development) about the death of Jesus.

Is a Children’s Picture Bible Really a Bible?

A couple of years ago as I was reading a popular religion/faith blog I came across comments from several parents who were so frustrated with their church or THE church that they had decided to take a break from church for a while and were using The Jesus Storybook Bible as a substitute for Sunday School. 

The full title of this children’s Bible is The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name. The “his” in the title refers to Jesus, and for each story, especially those from the Old Testament, there is a paragraph on how this story relates to Jesus Christ. I purchased it recently and found reading it a little like sitting through an extended children’s sermon where the children think the answer to every question asked is Jesus.

While there are many favorable reviews on Amazon for this children’s Bible, there are plenty of scathing reviews that mostly boil down to “this is not a Bible.” 

I totally agree. It is not a Bible. It is a children’s picture Bible. 

The World Religions: 5 (out of 100) Things Your Child Should Know Before Confirmation Class

I have written a few times before about being part of a family that is “inter-religious.” You can find these posts here, here, and here. Obviously, we are motivated to talk in our home about what it means to be a part of a religion that is not Christian. 

prayer beads from my brother

Of all the conversations that we have together with our son, these are the ones that seem to repeat most often. For example, no matter how many times we explain what it means to be Jewish, he will ask the same question again a month or so later.

Interestingly, he hardly ever asks about being a Buddhist. He only knows one, and I think he just trusts that his uncle knows what he is doing, so he doesn’t worry about it. 

When I work with students in a middle school, high school or Confirmation class, I instinctively want to teach them to respect and even appreciate other faith traditions. And yet, most youth these days have a decidedly post-modern perspective on the world, which means that they are already comfortable with differences and differences of opinion. They don’t usually need me to teach them respect...they need to hear from me why is I have chosen and why they may choose to be a Christian in the midst of a diverse religious landscape. 

The Miracles of Jesus: 5 (out of 100) Things Your Child Should Know BEFORE Confirmation.

The other day, while walking home from church, my son asked me if I ever wonder whether or not the things in the Bible actually happened. 

He said, “...like the story of the bush that was on fire and didn’t burn. That just can’t happen.” 

I told him that yes, there are some things in the Bible that are hard to explain and hard to understand AND which seem impossible to us. But the Bible is not just a story of what is possible for us, but there are also parts that tell us about things that are only possible for God to do. 

He wasn’t all that satisfied with this response...so I tried again.

I told him that I can’t really understand everything that happened in the Bible, but what I know is true and I know is real is that these stories were important to the people who came before us. They told these stories to teach each other about God, and this means that we continue to teach them and hear them, and they should still be important for us today. 

This, for some reason, made him feel much better. He could understand the real people who told these miraculous stories even when the miracles themselves were too hard to understand. 

Often when we teach the stories of the miraculous works of Jesus Christ from the gospels, both teachers and students get caught up in the plausibility or the probability of each one. We try to figure out how you fillet a fish into that many parts rather than trying to find the meaning behind a story of abundance. 

Confirmation is the perfect time to really wrestle with the miraculous moments in scripture - especially those done at the hands (and feet) of Jesus. When students have been taught the stories of Jesus’ miracles as younger children, they have had time to integrate the details into their understanding of who Jesus was. In Confirmation they can then wrestle with their faith in Jesus as a miracle worker and the question of what they can do when the miracles seem too hard to believe. 

You are not a Bad Person. You are Just a Person. The Problem of Sin.

Last night after a tearful recovery from an afternoon battle of wills, I asked my son if he could describe to me what exactly he thinks went wrong.

I feel like I am a problem you are trying to solve.

I am not sure if my response was all that helpful or appropriate, but I told him that actually he was right. He is my problem to solve. He is my child to teach. He is my person to raise and to shape into a helpful and thoughtful young man. 

I asked him if he wanted to be someone who is respectful and kind, and he quickly agreed that he does in fact want to be those things. And he often is. I told him that it is my job as his parent to teach him how to be those things. 

I asked him if he wants to be a patient person. He was less willing to concede to that one. He instead told me that he would like to be a person who doesn’t get bored so quickly. I will take what I can get. 

Iconic Characters of the Old Testament 5 (out of 100) Things Your Child Should Know Before Confirmation

The only time I have ever had a student drop out of Confirmation Class was on a

day we talked about Jonah. 

Samson with a distinct Grecian
look about him.

Biblical stories, especially the ones we teach in Sunday school, can take on a real air of mystery and meaning for children. We teach them that this is the Word of God, and they believe us. Unfortunately, we don’t always teach them what it means that this is the Word of God. In many Christian traditions, what it means is that the Bible is the dictated words of God which should be read both literally and as absolute historical fact.

In other Christian traditions (such as the one in which I teach) we believe that the Word of God is inspired by the work of the Holy Spirit. This means that we believe that human beings, inspired by God, wrote down their experiences of God, their religious practices, and the stories of their tradition. Imbued in their words is a Word of truth that we continue to seek after today.

In my experience (and in my specific tradition), much of the Bible study we do in Confirmation is about helping students make this shift from a literal and factual  reading of these stories of the Old Testament to a more literary and theological reading  which helps them seek that biblical truth for themselves.

Occupational Therapy for the Religious Lives of Our Children

For the past couple of months my son has been in occupational therapy once a week. It has been helpful for him as he works on understanding his body and how to give it the increased physical and sensory stimulus it seems to need.

I was not immediately sold on the therapy, though.

He spends a little under an hour playing with his therapist - rolling in beanbag chairs, jumping rope, throwing sticky frogs at a target while holding his head upside down, practicing yoga positions, spinning in an egg-shaped chair, and even snacking on Nutella and crackers. It was hard for me to understand the benefit and to justify the cost.

My son absolutely loves it. He loves his therapist. He loves the child-centered world that is her therapy room. He loves the stimulus and the attention. From the waiting room I can hear almost non-stop laughter from the first activity to the moment his time is up. Every time we walk out of the building he says, “I love that. I can’t wait till next week.”

I have begun to come around on the benefit of the therapy, and it has gotten me wondering why we don’t have a system to offer “religious therapy” for our children as well.

What Wondrous Love is This?

I can’t tell you how many times I have been forwarded the following joke; it goes something like this:

Little Timmy was struggling with his math schoolwork, to the point that his parents had enlisted tutors and taken other extreme measures. Their final decision was to enroll him in a Catholic school to see if greater discipline might help the situation.

Timmy came home from school the first day vowing to redouble his efforts in math from now on. When his parents asked him what happened at school to change his attitude, he told them that after seeing that guy nailed to the plus sign at the school, he knew that he needed to take math more seriously.

While this could actually turn into a reflection on sending your child to a religious school with absolutely no background on the basics of Christianity, instead it provides a helpful starting point for my own inner wrestling with how we have discussions with our children (at different ages and stages in their faith development) about the death of Jesus.

Here Am I

Mother and Child I
Ruth Sinclair

In the warmth of the womb I met you,
And I called you to life
Through the love of man and wife;
In the warmth of the womb I met you
Saying, “Here am I.”

As a baby in arms I met you,
Wrapped in linen and care,
Watched and welcomed everywhere.
As I baby in arms I met you
Saying, “Here am I.”

In the tensions of youth I met you,
Whether shy or uncouth,
Always searching for the truth;
In the tensions of youth I met you,
Saying, “Here am I.”

In the quiet of your home I met you,
When the door opened wide
Strangers came and out went pride;
In the quiet of your home I met you,
Saying, “Here am I.”

And wherever you go I will meet you
Till you draw your last breath,
In the birthplace known as death,
Yes, wherever you go I will meet you,
Saying, “Here am I.”

John L. Bell and Graham Maule, from “Heaven Shall Not Wait”

I have sung this piece from the Iona Community in Scotland to my son every night since he was a little baby. Always hoping that a solid bedtime routine with a consistent pattern would help us to win the battle against (or with) sleep, I would sing it faithfully - and still do - to help him drift off into sleep.

The Parables: 5 (out of 100) Things your Child Should Know Before Confirmation Class

Rembrant's iconic interpretation of the
Parable of the Prodigal Son

It was a conversation on the parables that first brought to my attention the possibility that students were not as prepared for Confirmation Class as I had hoped they would be. It was my very first class, and I was in my very first year of ordained ministry. We must have been talking about the New Testament or about the Gospels, and I asked if anyone could tell us the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

Silence.

"Has anyone heard the story before, but just can’t tell it to us?"

Silence.

"Does the phrase 'good Samaritan' mean anything to anyone?" Hands finally went up in the air, and they explained that this is how you describe helping someone out, being nice to someone in need, going out of your way. They even knew about "good Samaritan laws" that reduce the liability of those who stop to help strangers in need.

But none of them could describe the actual Parable of the Good Samaritan. I had a very similar experience with the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The difference in our interaction with this other iconic parable was that they were able to piece together the details of the parable, but didn’t know that it had an official name like “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.”

God is a Tower of Mothers

When my son was maybe three years old, he told me one night while I was putting him to bed that God was a man during the day and a woman at night. I have previously written about this and about the children’s book that Ithink planted this image in his head. It was one of the most beautiful moments I have ever had with him - the kind of moment that makes for a really schlocky sermon illustration attempting to make the point that the older we get the further away we are from our instinctive understandings and experiences of God.

I knew pretty soon after (based on my experience talking with teenagers about God) that someday in the future he will have no memory of his radical theological statement, and will most likely answer any question I have for him about the gender of God with an indignant, “What? Oh yeah, right.” 

Wisdom of the Old Testament: 5 (out of 100) Things Your Child Should Know before Confirmation Class

 It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I am mindful of this truism every time I sing a limp version of The Byrds 1960’s classic “Turn! Turn! Turn!” to try to convince a class of Confirmation students that they know a piece of scripture from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. It never works.

I don’t think it has anything to do with my singing (though I do find it to be a difficult song to pull off a cappella). They are just one too many generations removed from the 1960’s for the song to ring any bells. As depressing as that is, what is even more discouraging is that when I read the passage to them directly from the Bible, it is just as unfamiliar to them.

In this ongoing conversation about the things that can help your child get the most out of their Confirmation experience, I have included five examples of texts from the Old Testament wisdom/prophetic literature that should be a part of a student’s biblical psyche before the start Confirmation Class. You can read here the previous posts I have written in this series.

Big Bang Theology

"For me the universe is more coherent and congenial place if I assume that it embodies purpose and intention."

“We human beings are the most extraordinary creatures we know about, and part of our glory is that we can imagine we are not the most remarkable creatures in the entire universe."

Owen Gingerich, Harvard Astronomer & Mennonite

As we were eating dinner tonight, my seven-year-old turned to me and started to say, "Did you know that God..." Then he reassessed his approach and got a very serious look on his face and started again.

"I have some things to tell you."

Based on his false start I was prepared to hear that he had a prophetic vision to share, and I was almost as anxious as the priest Eli waiting to hear what God had said to the boy Samuel. My fears were unwarranted.

"When God created the world he didn't just do it like bam all green with regular animals and everything. First he had to create like a lava planet and then micro-organisms and then eventually dinosaurs, and then everything else up to today."

The Stories of Genesis – 5 things (out of 100) your child should know BEFORE Confirmation Class

The Ark of Noah by artist He Qi

While this is the second post in what will be a series of about 20 on the foundations that a child should bring to Confirmation class as a teenager, it is the first in a long string that will relate to biblical literacy.

It is overwhelming to think of an 8^th grader having mastered all of these stories. I don’t know many adults who have mastered them. But mastery is not the goal. Acquaintance with the most familiar and foundational stories and basic biblical knowledge are the goal.

Our task in Confirmation class is twofold: we look more closely at some of these stories to appreciate their beauty and pay attention to the details, and we discuss what they teach us about who God is and who we are as people who claim these stories as our own. These are the first real lessons they get in biblical interpretation.

The practice of hearing and telling these stories throughout their life helps a child and then a teenager think of them as their stories, their tradition, their history. This is a feat that cannot be achieved by reading them for the first time sitting around a table (circle of beanbag chairs) in a Confirmation class, no matter how much homework I assign them.

God Bless the Whole World

My son came home from first grade on Monday and told me that he had learned a beautiful song in music class that day- “God Bless America.” I agreed with him that it is indeed a beautiful song, and then in the pause before I continued with the conversation, the layers of experiences and beliefs that make these kinds of conversations sticky for me rapidly began to peel away.

This wasn’t any day, but September 12, 2011, the day after the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. Up until the day before we had never really talked to him about what happened that day four years before he was born. Inevitably, with the media coverage (that’s what we get for lingering in bed on a Saturday morning listening to NPR) and the commemorative litany that we used in worship that Sunday, we had just talked about it with him the day before. I shared with him that people who were angry with America flew planes into buildings in New York and that many people died, that it was a very sad day and that we pray for peace in the world. Interestingly, as we talked about it that night he summed it all up for me by saying, “you should never break hope.” I am not exactly sure what he meant by that, but it seemed fairly apt to the situation.

We are attempting to raise him to embrace his identity as a Mennonite, which means that we teach and practice pacifism. For our family, and for other Mennonites, 9/11 brings up all kinds of issues related to war, retaliation and social justice. How do you explain the complexities of these things to a child in the face of such a horrible attack? I am not sure that you do.

Raising him as a Mennonite also means that we tend to bristle at the idea of our son being taught nationalism in school. He has just begun to attend public school for the first time, and it had never crossed my mind that he would do things like say the pledge of allegiance every day. The picture at the top of this post is a diorama that he drew for us of his school, with him standing in front of it. When I asked him why he drew so many American flags (there were more on the other side) he exclaimed, “Because they are everywhere!” While we are by no means anti-American (okay, maybe sometimes we are a little bit) as people of faith, and especially as a Mennonite family, we want our son to understand his first allegiance to be to God not to the nation. Click here for more on a local battle over Mennonites andthe National Anthem at Goshen College.

Most viscerally, as this day marked just the first of what will be a lifetime of conversations with my son on this topic, I reacted as my own childhood self, who lived in a constant state of fear of nuclear war. While this fear no longer keeps me up at night (as a child I used to keep myself awake worried that there would be a bomb dropped while I slept) I can still remember the anxiety I felt over the possibility of war. My son has lived his whole life in a world where the U.S. is at war, and lives in a world where wars are not easily ended by peace treaties, diplomacy and disarmament. I can hardly imagine what he will come to be afraid of as he grows up, but I want to put off that day as long as possible.

It turns out that he learned much more in school that day than I had taught him the day before. He learned that the buildings were called the Twin Towers. He learned that because they were cross country flights that had just taken off, they had a large amount of fuel in them which made the explosions so big. He learned that when they collapsed thousands of people died. He also learned to grieve, as he told me that the thought of the people dying made him cry a little while they were singing in class.

And so I agreed with him, that it is a beautiful song, and we sang it together on the drive home and again at the dinner table that night. That day I decided that I didn’t need to go into all of the above issues with my son. He wouldn’t sit still long enough to hear me out anyway. I chose just to make one comment to him about the lyrics. I told him that as Christians we want God to bless the whole world not just the people who live in America. Frustratingly and innocently he tried to convince me that the song really meant the whole world, not just America. I stood my ground, and I insisted that it did not.

This exchange has led me to the decision to teach him a new song as well which sums up perfectly the kind of Christian and the kind of American I hope he grows up to be.

This is my song, Oh God of all the nations,
A song of Peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh hear my song, oh God of all the nations,
A song of Peace for their land and for mine.

May Truth and Freedom come to every nation;
May Peace abound where strife has raged so long;
That each may seek to love and build together,
A world united, righting every wrong;
A world united in its love for freedom,
Proclaiming Peace together in one song.

(sung to the tune of Finlandia)

The Lessons of Job or What I Did on My Summer Vacation

"Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads its wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes its nest on high? It lives on the rock and makes its home in the fastness of the rocky crag. From there it spies the prey; its eyes see it from far away.” Job 39:26-29

This past week my family (son, husband and in-laws) took our annual canoe trip into the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota. My very first trip into the BWCA was with my then boyfriend, his parents and some friends exactly 11 years ago. He likes to say that he took me camping early on in our relationship to see if I had what it took to be a permanent fixture in his life. It was a wonderful and strenuous trip, and there have been six since, four of which have included our now six year old son.

On our first day, as we pulled into the first portage of the trip, I told my son how lucky he was that he got to come to such a beautiful place each year and to have such a good time with his family. My husband chimed in with how lucky he was to have found a wife who was so excited to go canoeing with him. Our son quickly added how lucky I was that I married someone whose parents lived so close to the Boundary Waters, so I could get to go camping there each year. The counting of blessings went on and on.

Tough Texts - Noah's Ark

I will admit to being torn when it comes to the story of Noah and the Flood. On the one hand I am visually captivated by the many artistic interpretations of this story filled with an endless menagerie and the brilliance of the rainbow. It is also hard not to enjoy all of the many apocryphal retellings of the story - for example,  Shel Silverstein's Unicorn Poem.

But on the other hand, Noah's is a story of human depravity and the destruction of the world by God via natural disaster. Outside of the animals, and maybe a "white-washed" explanation of the sign of the rainbow as a promise of God's love, there is really nothing in this story that is G rated.

Here is a PG-13 paraphrase of the story as found in Genesis 6-9. By chapter six God is already sensing that this humanity project is not going to last forever - when He looks down upon the earth and sees the violence, wickedness and corruption, He is sorry that He ever made men and women. He is grieved in his heart. In addition to the sin there is also a passing reference to mysterious figures called the Nephilim (probably divine beings of sorts) who have begun mating with human women. It is not clear if this is part of the corruption of humanity or just a sign of the times.