Eighteen years ago we hosted a neighborhood Christmas party. It was a great celebration. Lights, decorations, music, neighbors, food, toasts, laughter, conversation, children running and squealing through the house. Late in the evening I noticed my 3 year old talking with an adult neighbor. She was explaining to him the incarnation using the Jesus figurine from a child’s nativity set. “This is Jesus,” she said, holding the piece a little too close to his face. He winced and recoiled. “And he was born, and his mother, Mary, laid him in a manger,” she continued. The neighbor tried to play along, he really did. But he couldn’t. His skepticism took over, even with a 3 year old. “I don’t know…,” he said. “Jesus has told me some lies during my lifetime,” he replied.
THAT was a moment of decision for me. In a split second I was putting my eggnog on a coaster (ALWAYS on a coaster…) and moving across the room to intervene. But something stopped me. DEAD in my tracks. If you ask me, it was the Holy Spirit. I didn’t hear a voice, but I was compelled to stand back. And wait. And watch. I picked my eggnog back up.
Across the room my 3-year-old-baby-girl-evangelist persisted. “No!” she said. “This is Jesus, and he was born, and his mother, Mary, laid him in a manger.” The neighbor had no rebuttal, and my little girl introduced him to the other pieces of the nativity set while I watched over the rim of my eggnog mug.
Where did she learn that? Of course she had heard the story and been called to tiny belief in children’s church (in our church plant at the time, we called it Worship Training). BUT she certainly continued to hear the story at home. All through the month of December we would open the doors of our Advent box, pull out chocolates and other confections, and read and confess the story of Jesus’s birth into our humanity to redeem and recreate every part of us. Family worship was shaping a tiny believer. Family worship was forming a small disciple. Family worship, beyond everything we could detect - amid the chocolates and the bible stories, and the conversations, prayers and carols - was building a child evangelist.
The amazing bits of this encounter? Had I gotten involved, it would likely have become an argument between grown men. But how do you argue with a 3 year old? If you’ve ever had the experience, you can’t win, even if you win. AND, the Holy Spirit can speak through toddlers. The gospel of Jesus, which carries the weight of the universe, can be proclaimed on the lips of tiny evangelists.
Is it too soon to start family worship with very small children? The sooner you start, the better, though it’s never too late, either. Can small children understand what we are saying? What we are doing? They understand like the rest of us - they believe first and with repetition understanding fills in and catches up. Can small children affirm our faith? They affirm it more boldly than we do because they don’t make any of the social calculations we feverishly try to figure and control. Can toddlers grow in faith and proclamation like the rest of us? Sometimes they grow right past us, before our very eyes.
If you’ve been avoiding family worship because you have worried your children are too young, each liturgy in Far From Home contains simple, repeated questions from the daily readings SPECIFICALLY designed for families and households with very young worshippers.
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