This week is Vacation Bible School for us, so I’d like to consider children as our topic for this week.
Our culture is a bit neurotic when it comes to children. On the one hand, we try to protect them and indulge them, often in ways that are completely over the top. On the other hand, we still want them to be “seen and not heard” and present a most unwelcome posture toward them in certain places and spaces.
But rather than consider what we think about children, what does God think about children?
Children Show Us the Unity of God
Did you ever wonder about the deeper meaning of the Scripture that says that “the two shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5)? We often call to mind the physical coming together of a husband and wife in marital intercourse, but the “one flesh” also points us to the fruit of this act: children, literally the “one flesh in person” from the two. A child gets literally half of her DNA from her father and half from her mother.
The same word is used in this “one-ness” that is the fruit of marriage and the oneness that is internal to God. In John 10:30 and 17:11, Jesus says that he and the Father are “one,” using the same word. In a wonderful and beautiful way, children in their very being, show us the “oneness” of God. And, of course, as human creatures we all bear God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27).
Children Show Us Faithful Dependence
Children are utterly dependent on their parents and other caregivers. They remind us that it is God who gives us our daily bread, our breath of life, that we live only by God’s gracious care and provision.
Children Show Us How to Be Present
Have you ever noticed how children–especially small children–get from point A to B? Answer: With lots of little stops along the way: pick the flower, watch the squirrel, laugh at the breeze.
Children Show Forth the Resurrection
Some of the first Christians also saw in children a foreshadowing, a “type” of the Resurrection. For children usually outlive their parents, they “continue” the live of their parents in their own lives. They “live beyond death,” our death. And in this way they are literally hope incarnate. In their very being they show forth and remind us of the promise we have in Christ for Resurrection, for new life!
Jesus’ words to the children, of course, are a word of welcome: Let the little children come to me! (Matthew 19:14, Mark 10:14, Luke 18:16).
Terms: “Children” vs. “Kids”
One final word about what we call our children…
A Mennonite pamphlet I read raised this issue and I think it is worth consideration, because how we name others shows, to a large extent, how we regard them. Do we call children “children” or do we call them “kids”?
I would venture to guess that most of us refer to children as “kids.” I have tried to make it a personal discipline to use the word “children” instead–at least as often as I remember to. I find it to be, on the whole, more honoring to children. “Kids” carries with it at least a slightly negative tone, as in “kids these days,” where the word “children” conveys a mix of innocence and vulnerability.
May we tend to our children, who are God’s children, in a way that is honoring to our Creator. And may we see in them the life that God intends for us all.