This Reminds Me

Archive for January 20th, 2008

Julia was given her first-grade bible in worship today, a long-standing Southern Baptist tradition for seven-year-olds.  She was sooo pleased, asking permission to take it to Sunday School since historically, many items desired for Sunday School have been refused entry, or hurriedly tossed back in the van upon discovery.  In class today, they made canvas bible totes, and Julia informed us she had to bring her bible to class every Sunday.

Julia on the far right in the early service being instructed by our pastor. a.k.a., “Catherine’s Papa”….Catherine being our sainted babysitter.  At least four other children who routinely attend the early service came home by a different way, like Julia.  It makes me smile to see them gathered around our children’s minister during her time with them, sometimes outnumbering the bios.

Tonight we’ll start reading a bit at bedtime.  If I were a more spiritual person, I would gush enthusiastically about how I’ve been anticipating this day.  In my dreams – I have.  You know, those airy, gauzy feelings you have when you’re about to add a child to your home.  You’re going to prepare nourishing, home-cooked meals every day.   The TV will be used for educational viewing only, just for a few minutes.  You will read to your child endlessly as she sighs contentedly in your lap.  You will reveal the great spiritual truths as your baby hangs on your every word, gleefully anticipating the next pearl to fall from your lips.

Then you actually have that child and….you forgot to turn the crockpot “on.”  You have to turn sideways in the utility room because of the laundry piles.  Somehow, you have to get to Wal-Mart before Thursday for volcano-building materials.  And the need for those great spiritual truths seems more and more dim in the blinding light of great daily realities.

With Rachel, Lois and Hannah – it was easier.  They’ve been in Sunday School their entire lives.  In fact, when I dared take eight-week-old Rachel into the sanctuary, our class director fumed at me, “That baby needs to be in the nursery – learning and making friends!”   Not that church teaching takes the place of home teaching – it cannot and should not.  But the older three had supplements and reinforcements, week after week, year after year.

Julia’s tougher.  No one rocked her singing, “Jesus loves the little children.”  No one clasped her little hands singing, “The wise man built his house upon the rock.”   No one slipped her into a bathrobe, pulled her shoes off and let her play “shepherd” with stuffed animals.  When we got her, she was eager to point to her little metal-dipped plastic cross and proclaim herself “Krist-i-on” because a priest visited and sprinkled her.  But we knew what she got from that was…..wet.

At lunch, Keith and I always ask the girls about their Sunday School lessons.  And I like to challenge them a bit, connecting dots.  If they mention something or someone from the Old Testament, I throw out a question relating to a corollary in the New Testament.  If they mention a patriarch or hero or whatever, I’ll ask, “So what was his relationship to…..?”   Julia doesn’t participate in those discussions, other than to tell us what her lesson was about.  For her, so much is still so literal.  Jesus in my heart means….what?  Heaven is where – those clouds?

As I watched her today, moving her gaze from sister to sister as they bantered answers and observations, I thought:  This child is a lot like Nicodemus.  He, too, was smart but a very literal thinker.  When he visited Jesus at night (for fear of discovery by his fellow ruling priests) and tried to flatter Jesus, Jesus responded that no one could enter the kingdom of God unless he had been born again.  Nicodemus totally didn’t get that.  The symbolism – whoooosh – right over his richly-covered head.   But Nicodemus came to understand.

We want Julia to understand, too.  I don’t know at what point knowledge will turn to belief.  But we gotta start with the knowledge.  And it’s all in that book she was handed today.

John: 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.