A Wonderful Resource for Children

I was visiting the States this past Fall, bopping about in my local, Charlotte, NC Cokesbury Bookstore (my favorite Christian bookstore, by the way), and I found this little treasure, which I later bought for my daughter Avery as a Christmas gift.  It’s called Come, Worship with Me by Ruth Boling It features a church full of adorable little mice, and the central character/narrator is a young mouse taking us to “come worship” with him, through all the special days of the Church year.

As we go through the Calendar, the young fellow draws us into the joy and the solemnity, the deep meaning and the simple lessons of each step through the year, and through the story of Jesus it tells.

After each page-long, beautifully illustrated “joural page”, describing ritual, song, and significance, the little mouse ends with a simple, sentence-long message: “God is near,” “Sometimes we can see God,” “We need God,” “God is alive.”  Each child-friendly summary wraps the special services of the Christian year into an easy-to-remember package that my 4-year-old (and her 36-year-old Daddy!) can chew on until the next special day.

Allow me to end with a bit of a tanget: Last night, as Avery stared at the picture of the little mouse receiving the dark gray, ashen cross on his forehead, she began urging me to do that to myself, and then to her!  As I had some ashes, after demonstrating on my own forehead, I knelt before her on the couch, and I told her, “Avery, remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return, but you will rise to life.”  She smiled and nodded, and then made me do it to her Mommy.

This morning, last night’s family service of Ash Wednesday (with its harsh reality/promise of dust and resurrection) fresh in her mind, she asked me, “Will Abby the cat rise?”

Our cat’s not even dead!  So, at first I wasn’t sure what on earth she was talking about.  I had to ask her to clarify.

“With us.  At the, um, the…”

“Resurrection?”

“Yeah, will Abby rise?”

Okay, that led to a great little discussion about animals in the new heaven and new earth, what we know and don’t know about animals, lions laying with lambs etc. etc.  But the point is, she went to bed knowing she was dust and yet somehow much more than dust.  Then, walking to school, she had eternity on the brain.  Amen.