“Mama,” my nephew Zachary said, his six – year – old brow furrowed, “I think I would have looked back, too.”
His mother, my sister Hannah, had just read aloud the story of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction found in Genesis 19. A pair of angels dragged a reluctant Lot and his family from their home and ordered them to flee their doomed city—to flee without pausing, without turning back, until they reached the next town. Lot and his two daughters ran to their temporary refuge, but “Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (19:26).
“I think I would have looked back, too.” As my sister relayed Zachary’s words over the phone, I paused. “Oh, dear boy. We all would have looked back,” I said. His words showed that he was growing. It was a proud moment for me as his aunt, and a sobering one.
Zachary let his mother know that he had let the story read his heart. He let the story tell him what it found there: on his own strength, obeying the Lord is too hard. Would he—could he—leave everything he knew, everything that was familiar and comfortable and home to him? At God’s command, could he leave all of that and not pause, not even turn back for a moment?
This kind of openness to God’s story can happen when we engage in prayer and devotion as adults and invite our children to join us. More than any particular teaching method, Zachary’s trusting relationship with his mother and her own engagement with the living stories of the Bible enabled him to live into God’s story. Zachary made a troubling discovery about himself, which could lead to a genuinely hopeful discovery about God. Hannah simply told the story and allowed Zachary to find his way in it, rather than “tsk tsk – ing” at Lot’s wife through direct comments or leading questions.
What Zachary encountered was decidedly not the “kiddie gospel,” to borrow a term from Gretchen Wolff Pritchard. It was the real thing. Zachary, a pilgrim on a journey with God, wants to do what is right, but his heart is wayward. God calls him to walk in right paths and longs to help him. I was moved to hear Zachary’s expression of God’s calling to discipleship.
In Children’s Ministry That Fits, David M. Csinos offers the “fellow – pilgrim” metaphor as a helpful one for shaping how we as adult mentors relate to the children and youth in our lives. Csinos was part of the Camp Kintail speaker series on May 7, 2013, an event that was co – sponsored by Connections (the Youth and Family Ministry of Southwestern Ontario).
Csinos suggested exchanging the model of ministry “to” or “for” children, which casts them as consumers of a service, and replacing it with a model of ministry “with” children. Adults open their hearts to the children they serve and are willing to be served by those children. “Children’s Ministry in the Way of Jesus” means children being real participants in all their faith community’s practices: taking communion, sharing potlucks, praying, serving the poor, singing, and reading the Bible and allowing it to read them, to name a few. (Children’s Ministry in the Way of Jesus is the title of Csinos’ upcoming book co – authored by Ivy Beckwith.) In his journey of discipleship, Zachary is not alone. He shares the road with fellow pilgrims, his mother and his aunt, for two.
All of us on this pilgrimage of faith find ourselves “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1), from those like Abraham who followed God in ancient times, to our fellow believers in a 21st – century world. The story of Lot is a part of this vast web of eclectic yet interconnected stories that are composing God’s grand story.
The New Testament teaches us that through Jesus, God extends the covenant relationship He made with Abraham to all nations in His coming kingdom. This kingdom is open to all who call on Jesus’ name, including—especially—the least of these, among them my nephew with his furrowed brow, his troubled mind and his trusting heart.
