This summer I have been teaching the four-six year old Sunday School class at church. Young children have very interesting perspectives on theology.
“Jesus rose from the dead ‘cause He’s magic!” (Well, no. God can do anything, but that’s not the same as magic.)
“Because Jesus is God!” Next week: “Jesus isn’t God, He’s God’s SON.” (He’s both, honey; we’ll talk about the trinity later. Like in college.)
“If there is a rainbow in heaven, will it be raining there?” (That one stumped me.)
But one thing that my class has caused me to ponder more than anything else is prayer. Each morning before anything else, I ask if anybody has anything they would like to tell us. Shannon Smith taught me to do this, and it helps to keep kids from bursting out with the exciting thing they did this week in the middle of the story. After that, I pray for our class. I had never asked for prayer requests, but one day someone just said they had one. And that first one might have been a legitimate request; I don’t remember exactly. But then everyone had one, and now every week almost everyone has one. And you know what? Most of them are for owies.
“I scratched my finger” “I have a bug bite” “My knee is scraped” “My toe got hurt”
And I began to wonder, “What is up with all the owie requests??”
I have come to the point where I take one general raise of hands for who has an owie (usually everyone), and I pray for all the children who have owies, for God to help their bodies be strong and heal the way He made them to.
I do not want to ever say that God doesn’t care about your owie, it will heal on its own, because that really isn’t true. God does care about our cares, and anything that our bodies do right is a good gift from above.
However, I continue to ponder this phenomenon of owie requests, and I have something of a hypothesis.
I remember this sort of thing happening when I was in junior church too. The teacher often would ask for “Praises”, yet children would invariably default to giving requests. Few children could give a praise, but almost EVERYBODY could think up a request (except maybe the shy kids) even if it was just an “owie”. I have observed this phenomenon in most groups of churched children that I have worked with, on several age levels, and in various programs.
Why do they do this?
As you well know, children learn much from what they see adults do. (Do you see where I am going with this?)
How often do kids see us adults give loads of “praises”? How often have children heard their parents pray a whole prayer in thanksgiving and not ASK God for anything?
I know for myself it is often really really hard to pray and not ask God for anything; to just praise Him for who He is and what He has done. Our God is wonderful enough to make this very easy if we focus on Him and not our own small scraps and scratches. Again, God cares for our cares, and we are told to cast them before Him, but His glory and blessings deserve at least equal time in our prayers.
I think the reflection in our children shows us as adults that praise is something we need to practice more, and to pattern and teach more. It is something I desire to learn now and remember when Silas is old enough to say “owie.”
