Lessons From Teaching Children

There was A Game going around Manitoulin Youth Conference this past year involving spiritual analogies. The idea is to take everyday things, events, and people and think about them in such a way as to find a spiritual lesson. (The best one I heard was an analogy from a mosquito bite — I’ll let you figure that one out…) It’s amazing how much you can see if you start looking, and it keeps you thinking about spiritual things.

Lessons from a pouting child

I work at an elementary school which gives me many occasions for spiritual lessons. After all, children are human nature in the raw, totally uninhibited. It’s a startling thing to stare into the face of a child pouting over the injustice of not getting his own way and to realize that that’s me sometimes, only I can cover it up better. So what is this game, really? Here are a few lessons from my work to start you thinking.

One day I was playing monkey­in-the-middle with a group of about ten kids, mostly kindergarten. Everyone was standing in a circle around the “monkey” and tossing the ball randomly. I always keep an eye on whose turn it should be to throw the ball to make sure the shy children get to play. Well, that’s not good enough for little Emily. No sooner does she throw the ball then I see her chubby lip go out, tears well up in her eyes, and, in a whiny, pitiful voice I hear, “Miss Carly, I NEVER get to throw it!”

It makes me think to myself, What gives here? Is it short-term memory loss? Did she actually forget or is she just ignoring the fact that the ball just left her hands ten seconds ago? If you think about it though, the Israelites had the same problem. God led them out of Egypt, then through the Red Sea on dry land, and yet not three days later they were complaining. Did they forget? How could they possibly forget this loving and merciful act of God that was unparalleled in history?

Hmmm, maybe not on such a grand scale, but I know I do the same thing myself sometimes. All the time in my life troubles will arise, I will pray, God will act, and I can see that it was by His hand it worked out. And yet at the very next trial I turn to God with a pout and say, “You NEVER help me…” Let’s take the lesson to remember God’s mercy, and not forget as soon as things don’t go as we’d wish them to. “Forget not all His benefits…”

Lessons from drawing a picture

I love to draw. So one of my favorite activities at work is to take a stack of paper and some markers and draw with the aspiring artists. It doesn’t take much to impress children (thankfully) and it didn’t take them long to notice that I could make a fair semblance of a drawing. Now when I draw, it attracts a small crowd of enthusiasts. They stand around and from the first stroke on the empty page I hear, “What’s that?” As I continue drawing, the discussion picks up between various interpretations. “It’s a cat, isn’t it?” “No it’s not! It’s a sun!” “Nu-uh, it’s a bug.” “Are you gonna color that part blue?” Finally, as the picture becomes composed, they see what it really is. “Oh, it’s a flower! That’s a pretty picture!” So it is with our lives.

We know that God is a good artist. We know He will draw something beautiful in the end (assuming we love Him) and that each line drawn in our life is part of the design. Unfortunately, we don’t know what the picture is inside the Artist’s head, so we sit around speculating. “Is this necessary? What’s that? I don’t get it.” But we always have to trust that He is making a picture, and in the end we will see it.

Job struggled with the same issue. He couldn’t see why God was drawing such lines in his life, and why they had to be in such dark colors, but the Designer knew best. Lesson? All things do work together for good, only we must wait patiently and trust the steady hand of the Designer to see the picture. “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.”

Lessons from a marble drop

One day we had “Build It!” day. We brought out construction sets like Lincoln Logs, Legos, Tinker Toys, and those fascinating sets where you build a course for a marble to drop through. I sat down with the latter and a few children and started to put together the ramps, bridges, tubes, and connectors in a haphazard way. I thought, it being a children’s toy, that you could construct a creative course however you wanted. This proved not to be the case. All the holes have to line up just so, the ramps must be in the right direction, and it has to fit together perfectly. If not, then the marble drops straight to the bottom with a thunk, completely bypassing all the interesting paths it was supposed to take.

After no less than three tries of putting it together to match the picture on the box, I gave up in frustration and concluded that one would need a Master’s degree in engineering to construct the toy (I really don’t know how children are expected to do it)! Lesson? There were no directions – believe me, I looked. Let’s be thankful that in this complicated course of life we were not left without directions. We have an entire Instruction Book at our fingertips all the time. Without it our brainless little marbles would never be going the right way.

Now that you know how the game is played — what are the spiritual analogies in your life?