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I turned eight in 1972, 44 years ago.  Every Sunday morning my family attended a local southern Sydney suburban Methodist church.  After a hymn or two and, perhaps, a short children’s talk by the minister, the children headed out to Sunday school.

Being in the infants department, I headed downstairs and out the back to the separate, high-ceilinged white fibro classrooms.  Actually, I have faint recollections of some singing with all the little kids before the big Year 2 kids—of which I was one—headed off to class.

I have mainly misty mind-pictures of those Sunday School mornings:  Uncooperative  crayons, worn until fully retreated into their paper sheath; random woody rainbows of pencils standing to attention in their wallpaper-covered tins; little brightly-painted Goldilocks tables and chairs; Bible stories getting told, then coloured in.

Sunday School 2

Out of the mist of memory, like a looming monolith, comes that young woman’s smiling, listening kindness.

There was an older lady—who isn’t old when you’re 8?—and a younger lady.  As I’ve thought about it, the younger could well have been a teenager, making the transition from student to teacher, helping with the cutting out and pasting and pack up.  Out of the mist of memory, like a looming monolith, comes that young woman’s smiling, listening kindness.

Back Stories & Big Questions

By 1972 our family was two years into a major upheaval.  We’d emigrated to Australia in 1970 from cosy, familiar, safe Dublin on the other side of the world. Much of that experience was a grand adventure, and I was blessed to navigate it all as a loved little boy in a secure family. But it wasn’t without its tears, tumult and terrors.  Little boys have back stories, fertile minds, moments to process, big questions.

My class was dismissed—released might be a better word—one Sunday morning. It was the usual mad dash upstairs to snag a few Scotch finger biscuits and a plastic tumbler of weak orange cordial.  But something caught me outside the door and I found myself returning and standing in the doorway as my young teacher was restoring order to the scissor and pencil cupboard.

“Colin.  What is it?”  I don’t just see her smile as I write.  I can feel it.

“When you pray, do you have to speak out loud?”

I don’t know where it came from. Was it because we had clasped our hands in prayer as Sunday School’s regular “The End”?  Had the story that day been the tale of a bearded petitioning patriarch, falling in prayer?  Or maybe Gideon and his fleece?  Or was it Jesus in Gethsemane?  It’s not even fuzzy—I have no idea what elements combined to kick off that chain-reaction of childish curiosity.

But I had a good question. And I knew who to ask. And the answer has shaped my walk with my God ever since.

“No Colin.  You don’t have to pray aloud for God to hear you.”  She’d welcomed my question with a warm, engaging smile.

“So if I think a prayer, in my mind, God will hear what I say?”

“Yes.”

Stunning Discovery

A nod and a smile, this time from the retreating 8-year-old, whose manners were forgotten.  I skipped down the steps into the sunshine in a moment of stunning discovery.

A nod and a smile, this time from the retreating 8-year-old, whose manners were forgotten.  I skipped down the steps into the sunshine in a moment of stunning discovery.

I was still well within earshot, but my young Sunday School teacher—I don’t know her name or what became or her—didn’t hear the next thing I said.  That’s because I didn’t say it.  I thought it.

“Hello God.  I know you can hear me…”  Anywhere.  Anytime.  He hears what no one else can.  Right in the middle of the chatter and clatter of Sunday bests and scotch fingers…  “I am talking to you, God—right now—and no one else knows except you…”

Treasures for a Lifetime

Children are question machines.  They don’t stop.  And they (we—all of us had a childhood) don’t remember every question; just like we don’t remember every answer.  But beware of letting incidence disguise significance.  Children ask to find out.  If they ask you, it’s because they think you’ll know the answer.  Like a pressed flower, picked one Spring from a paddock of countless blooms, one or two will be preserved, perhaps treasured a lifetime, echoing into eternity.

That makes answers very important.  Especially when the question is about the things of God.  The next answer you give to a child might just be one that shapes their spiritual understanding for a lifetime.  So watch what you say, Christian kid’s worker.

A third time the Lord called, ‘Samuel!’ And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, ‘Here I am; you called me.’  Then Eli realised that the Lord was calling the boy.  So Eli told Samuel, ‘Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”’ (I Samuel 3:8-9)


Photos: Brant hardy, suzette.nu (inset); flickr

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