“Shhh. Everyone be quiet as we go into the sanctuary.” It was a message these kids had heard dozens of times in practicing for their Christmas pageant. As a gifted preschool teacher corralling 12 excited 4 year olds, who could blame her for reminding then to keep their voices down. “Remember, this is God’s house,” I could hear her say from my office across the hall as delicate voices whispered and tiny shoes shuffled by my doorway, a few little heads with big grins peeking in to see if I was there.
Not long after, I found myself leading this same group into the sanctuary to learn about Easter. We all headed up to the front to look at the church decorated in white and to examine the symbols that remind us of our new life in Christ. “Boys and girls, keep your voices down” I heard myself saying to the raucous group ambling up the center aisle. Just then I felt a slight tug at my pant leg as I took another step forward on the worn carpet heading up to the cross. I looked down to see a pair of hazel eyes excitingly staring up at me. She was brimming with some new-found revelation, her mouth barely able to contain in her discovery for the second it took me to turn toward her. Beaming, she proudly announced what she had just figured out. “We have to be quiet in God’s house,” she said slowly, “because God is sleeping, right?” anticipating great praise for this connection she had made. And who could blame her? What other logical conclusion might a four-year-old draw? I smiled weakly, masking the sharp pain I felt hit my heart as the words echoed deep inside. God is sleeping. As I looked back at her, I heard these words pounding inside me: “He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep”, this promise of scripture washing over me.
And had we told her God was sleeping? In our calm, collected, and organized attempts to introduce her to the living God by instilling in her heart the story of the God-man come down, by bringing her forward to the altar to see the cross, that rugged instrument through which the whole world would be changed, had we somehow taught her that God was busy, that God couldn’t be bothered by the squeaky voices of preschoolers? Had we told her that the temple of the Lord was quiet, musty and only reserved for those who are well behaved? God’s house where Hannah wailed and cried out, where Zechariah boldly questioned the messenger Gabriel, where Simeon praised God mightily, clutching the tiny messiah in his arms. Had we unknowingly implied that the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Alpha and the Omega was of all things… asleep?
Oh how crystal clear was the message she heard reflected up at me that day with fingers clenched on the seam of my pant leg. How plainly she had interpreted that message; the message I never intended to preach, that the sanctuary was a place for well behaved people because God couldn’t be bothered by things like giggles, loud voices or pretend airplane noises. And I wondered, had there been others? What else had I taught them unknowingly, unintentionally?
One of the gifts of children is their ability to hear us even when we are not speaking, to perceive our theology as we talk of nothing more than walking in a straight line, to hear God-talk when we think we speak only of basic directions. It is a gift, a precious treasure that they are able to see God woven so plainly woven into the tapestry of every day life as we adults too often struggle to connect to God in those everyday moments. But this keen sense means that we, as adults, are always preaching. Through our words, our actions, and the simple moments when we think we aren’t even talking about God--we are. We are preaching, because these children, the ones Jesus invites so boldly to come to him, haven’t separated theology from everything else. They haven’t divided God talk from earthly talk. Their world and their faith is uncompartmentalized. For them, God is inseparable from creation and inseparable from every day moments. Because of that, as church leaders everything we do, everything we ask them to do, in their mind, is directly related to who God is. And isn’t that the way it should be? Isn’t that life as God intended it? Everything we do, everything we are, flowing from God?
And so, we are always telling God’s story. From the simplest of moments giving instructions to the lessons and sermons we prepare for hours, we are sharing about God. A God who is tangibly present in every moment, a God who is wide awake, who never sleeps, who is active and working in our world, drawing us to Him and sending us out to serve in a never ending cycle of worship and mission, a holy sequence of seeking God in the temple and seeing God in the world. A God who loves us just as we are, not only our best-behaved selves. We are preaching to these young ones in every moment, and what we preach matters, because at this young and precious age there is no difference between talking about God and getting ready to talk about God. And how beautiful is that? As we reached the front of the sanctuary, I gathered them in around me, drawing them close, because I had something important to tell them. “Boys and girls”, I begin, drawing in a deep breath, and slowly exhaling, “what does it mean to you to be wide awake?” I ask; a poignant reminder to myself that, especially with these young ones, every waking moment is testimony.
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