I have to give a 'Children's Moment' to the church today. The 'Children's Moment' is not just to the children but to the entire congregation as the children sit around me in the front of the church. Today's lesson is about Jesus making the blind man see. It is also about Psalm 133, "How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!" I asked the pastor where he wanted me to go with this and he said, "Follow your prayerful heart."
Unfortunately, my prayerful heart makes these kinds of assignments way over the comprehension level of the average 5 year old.
I decided to call my friend Pat. She told me that she could look in her many books on children's church lessons and find an example of conflict for me. I said, "Oh, Pat...I fear that I have
plenty of examples of conflict to choose from!"
I decided that today I will tell the following story and I hope that somehow it will tie the two passages together in a way that the kids can relate to and will not humiliate my children. Well, a little humiliation... OK, no humiliation... well...
Marina and Falcom love their brother Willie. He has always been a great brother. He plays with them every game they ask him to play and he enjoys it! He tells them stories and laughs with them. He listens to them when they talk! He swims with them in the ocean! He has been the kind of brother that every child should have.
This summer, Willie graduated from high school, has a girlfriend, a job, a truck and friends besides Falcom and Marina. Between our being busy and Willie wanting to be with his friends, Marina and Falcom have not seen Willie all summer. Now, their brother DeeJay has moved on and they miss him terribly and now their brother Willie?
As a mother, I would like the story of Jesus and the blind man to mean that Willie suddenly opens his eyes to the reality of the importance of family and stops acting like an average, run of the mill, friend obsessed teenager and jump into a functional adulthood! But no... I can not use this story to manipulate Willie and tell him that he is seeing people as trees and that he needs to have the touch put on him.
Instead, I will tell you that when Willie finally came home and Marina and Falcom saw him, they nearly cried! They were so happy! And then Marina filled with rage! She started yelling at him! "How could you stay away from me so long!" She started punching him with all that rage! Lucky Willie is a big man now or he would have been pounded into sausage!
Falcom became very uncomfortable. "Marina it's OK! It's OK! He is here now, let's go watch a movie. Stop doing that he is here now. You are going to make him not want to come back."
God wants us to live together in unity. He also wants us to take another look at what we think we are seeing. Was Marina's punching Willie the right way to tell Willie how he had hurt her? Was Marina really furious or was she really very sad? Was Falcom's way of pretending nothing was wrong the right way to deal with his hurt? What do you think Jesus would have wanted them to do instead?
Sometimes it is challenging to see beyond our first feelings, (the trees) but it is what Jesus would like us to learn to do so that we can live together in unity.
