This week the children learned about John the Baptist. I enjoy sharing with them about John the Baptist because he is so interesting. He lived in the dessert, eating locusts and honey, and wearing camel hair for clothes. He truly was a man of humble means. He had no home and ate what he could find. He did however have a job, and a very important one at that, his job was to prepare the way for Jesus.
On Thursday morning one of my students picked out a story to be read at carpet time, it was an old book and one that I use often with the children. It was written by Susan Riley in 1978 so you can imagine that the pictures are very outdated but the message itself is timeless: “I’m Sorry. What does it mean?” At our school we do believe that the children should apologize to one another. It may be that they really aren’t sorry but saying it doesn’t hurt anyone and while it doesn’t heal the other person miraculously it does make that other child feel better on the inside. The children love to give examples of people that have wronged them, their siblings or friends, and then we can talk about not only the sorry part of the conversation but the forgiveness part too. Often times when someone apologizes the response is “that’s okay.” It really is not “okay” though is it, we wouldn’t want that person to do it again, would we? We work with the children to say this instead, “I forgive you, but don’t do it again.” These are important interactions at our school, our goal is to teach children how to be kind to one another and to love one another as God loves them.
After reading the “I’m Sorry” story I chose to read from one of our many children’s bibles. That day I chose “The Story Bible” written by Edward Engelbrecht and Gail Pawlitz. (This is one of my favorite new children’s bibles. We read from this one at least once a week.) We turned to the story of John the Baptist, now I will say that I do change the wording a little so the children can understand. Small children, such as the three and four year old children in my class, do not understand what the words "sin" and "repent" mean. They do understand however that we sometimes make choices or do things that hurt others and that we have to say sorry. In the passage we read about the people who were sorry and after being baptized asked John “What shall we do?” His response:
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“Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”
When we finished the Bible story we talked about sharing food with people who do not have any. Currently at our school we are holding a food drive for the West Side Food Bank. Reading the story and giving the children the experience of putting food in the bin, applies the bible lesson to their lives and makes it relevant to their world. Just as John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus it is our job to prepare the children in our care for their world.
