Purchased: Children's Bible

After borrowing the Read and Learn Bible from the Resource Center for Churches, I decided to buy a copy.

My children each wanted their own. My oldest tried to claim sole ownership of the one I bought. But I'm maintaining that it belongs to all of us. I want to use it too (not only for my work at church but personally!)

A few of you may know that my idea of in depth Bible study is pretty hard core. Don't mistake that to think that I don't think it's great to being able to sit down and read a huge chunk of the Bible (basic versions of major stories that is) in one sitting. I'm also happy to find this resource of child friendly versions of stories. It will make my work as a parent and at church easier.

My oldest child has a ton of paper scraps in it marking stories to read. I think that's great.

What do I like about this Bible?

• My kids' excitement about it.
• The pictures aren't dry and musty looking. Neither do they exceed my cutesy tolerance threshold.
• The text is visually appealing. It's is a modest amount in large print. Enough to tell the story. Not so much as to make one hesitant to delve in.
• The stories are told in ways that I think are basic & accessible without excessive embellishment or interpretive commentary.

My main complaint to this point: I would prefer more gender neutral language.

The technicalities:

• The text is a paraphrase using the Contemporary English Version and the King James Version.
• It says it's oriented to kids 5-8 (or 4-7 depending where you read.)
• Published by Scholastic with the cooperation of the American Bible Society in 2005.

This Stuff Works!

Again this Sunday I was impressed with the results of using a story from Young Children and Worship or Godly Play. My experience and training in these curricula are limited, my materials are mostly home made out of cardboard and paper...and still I see such interest and response from children!

I was able to give a couple kids a lot of time to work with the story materials themselves after I told the story about Zacheaus. They are eager to do this. One child used the materials to work through the story again without using the words. The other child largely made up new scenarios with the materials. The most poignant of these in my mind was when the child had someone say to Zacheaus: "Do you know why people don't like you? Go that way," pointing toward Jesus, "There is a man who will love you."

Math as a Spiritual Matter

If we think of one aspect of spirituality as having to do with making a connection to that which is beyond ourselves, many things have a spiritual dimension.

One of my children began asking about which numbers are real....a gazillion? a billion?....

This led to the child saying that numbers are interesting.....not regular numbers like 1 or 9 or 100, but numbers like 101. It was as if at that point the limits of the imagination were stretched to the point of fascination with that which is known to be there, but which can not quite be known.

It gives me another hint/question about what it might mean to enter the realm of God like a little child.

I got to talking at work about my child's questions. It's led to wonderful conversations. Not religious conversations per se, but conversations that, at least for me (and I can only speak for me) have spiritual impact and theological implications. This is especially gratifying in light of my post related to all the time I spend at work vs with people from church, and the idea it led to that I ought avail myself to connecting more with people at work.


Quite a lot has come from a conversation with a child. Not that I should be surprised, right?

New Connection - Born Again

Reflecting on a child's response, I became concerned that they might have misunderstood the part of last week's story that says that one who does not receieve the kingdom of God like a little child will not enter it. Did I or the text ever say "as a child" rather than "like a child"? Did they hear "as a child" and think it meant "when a child" rather then "like a child"?

Such a scary responsiblity this buisness of teaching children sometimes seems.

The brighter note here is the connection the line of thought brougth me.

It's not that one has to receive the kingdom of God WHEN a child in order to enter it.
One can recieve the kindgom of God LIKE a child at any time or age.
We can be like a child at any age....we can be BORN AGAIN.
I hadn't thought of it that way before.

So far I haven't gone back to the biblical texts to check out how well that interpretive connection holds up. But in my mind the connection seems meaningful, helpful, worth further exploration.

Parenting on SOF

Listening to the podcast of the Speaking of Faith broadcast "Remembering Forward" in which Krista Tippett reads from her recent book, also titled Speaking of Faith, I enjoyed hearing her say,

"I know of no richer source of theological enlightenment than parenting."

She said a lot more interesting things, on this topic and others, but I'll leave it to you to pursue the links above if you wish.

Another Speaking of Faith program "Spirituality of Parenting" is one that has a discussion guide available. Anyone interested in using it sometime?

When Will the Story Come Back?

Yesterday a child asked, "When will the story come back?"

They meant the stories that Aron has read from children's books during Sunday morning services.

We started doing that with the intention of doing it as often as possible. That hasn't turned out to be very often lately. It's hard to find the time to identify a workable book relevant to the text or theme for each week.

Here's an encouragement to up it on the priority list.

Loaves, Fishes, Breakfast Bars & Jesus Bread

Sunday a child had a cereal bar at church. (Okay, let's be honest....it was one of MY children....and no, I didn't manage to sit them down to eat before church....but I usually do and church was an hour early and...well, you don't need to hear all about it...)

The child with the cereal bar, with adult encouragement, offered some to another child.

As the child with cereal bar broke a piece off and gave it to another child the image reminded me of a celebrant breaking a piece of bread and offering it to a person receiving communion.

But that's not even the most cool part.

When I asked if they knew what it reminded me of when they broke off a piece of the bar and gave it to the other child, an 8 year old piped in and said:

Jesus. Jesus giving people what they need.