When a Child Dies: John 11, a Vase, and a Teacup

A precious baby was born this week. In the space of an hour, he wove his history into the fabric of the lives of his family and their friends and people who knew his story. Of the millions of things that can go wrong as a baby grows towards birth, one of them did. His parents knew for several weeks to expect a brief stay. With grace and steadfast faith, they chose to love him well as long as they had him. They called him Nehemiah, “God is our comfort,” and prepared to treasure him intensely every minute he was here, and they did.

What do you tell children when a baby dies?

A bouncy little girl came to Children’s Church for the first time, so excited to finally be old enough to join our class! She was sunshine on two feet – exuberant and smiley and eager to learn. That afternoon an accident in her home turned off the sun for her family and friends.

What do you tell children when a child who is their friend dies?

These shortest of lives catch us off guard. We see the decline of our parents and older friends and ready our hearts for the day their health fails and their full lives overflow into eternity. We know, theoretically, statistically, that humans of every age may die, but it never becomes normal to say good-bye to a young person, a child, a baby. Our hearts do not accept this change in rhythm without protest. The hearts of children are not tuned to death at all, and we do not want them to enter this arena too abruptly. But life events may force our hand.

How were we to press on in Children’s Church, honoring our friend, Carey, acknowledging her passing, and yet not dwelling in the shadow of death? What will we tell the children we know who experience the death of a baby? There is help in John 11, the raising of Lazarus, and in a vase and a teacup.


John 11

John records Jesus speaking to his disciples, saying some confusing things, things even children will notice. “This sickness will not end in death,” Jesus said. Nearly in the same breath, he told them clearly, “Lazarus is dead.” As verse follows verse, it is revealed that Jesus spoke the truth, as He always does. Lazarus was dead, but his sickness did not end in death. The Resurrection and the Life called him back from the impossible, no-exit condition of death, and Lazarus came. Like the disciples and Mary and Martha, we are sometimes presented with confusing developments, including the sudden passing of a friend or loved one. We may not understand what God is doing, but we can trust Him to be keeping His promises, working for our good, standing for us, calling us from death to Life.


A Vase and a Teacup



Picture a tall vase, complex in its design and impressive in size – a stunning piece of craftsmanship taking days, perhaps weeks, of skilled effort to create. Beside this vase, gingerly place a miniature teacup, delicate and graceful, a piece equally breathtaking but a less time-consuming labor. Both are signed by the same master artisan.

God forms some of his people-clay into vases, larger vessels with intricate patterns, crafted in spans of years that become decades. No less precious are the teacup lives he fashions, miniature works of fine detail and execution achieved in fewer days, sometimes hours, even minutes. Both are fit to hold the purposes of God, to contain the glory that is His image in us.

Whether for a life of minutes, hours, days or years, we are knit together in our mothers’ wombs according to God’s intentional design. Vases and teacups alike are vessels of glory and power and redemption in His hands and will pour out the same praise to King Jesus.

40 Days Is How Long? + How to Make a "Feely Box"

¹ Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ² After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. - Matthew 4:1-2 NIV

Time is a pretty abstract concept to children, and the younger they are the more foggy it is. A week is a l-o-n-g time, so 40 days is a mushy piece of forever!

For our lesson about Jesus being in the desert for 40 days, Google and I made a blank two-month calendar on a piece of card stock. (Use “Image” search to find a blank calendar. Place in MSWord. Crop and resize. Or create a calendar using the Tables tool in MSWord.) I highlighted the days we would be marking off and outlined Day 40 in red. Counting back from the Sunday designated Day 40, we needed to include a few days ahead of our lesson day to reach the total.  

A beautiful, golden dinner roll displayed on the table at the front of our class enhanced our reading of the text. We were already hungry enough to want to eat the roll, and we had had breakfast a few hours before! By tomorrow this time, could we say no to turning stones into bread if we had the power to do it? How long would it be to wait 40 days to eat again?

The 40-day calendar was introduced, and we talked about what we were going to do with it. We marked off the four extra days we needed plus that Sunday. The next Sunday we marked off the week that had passed plus the current day and briefly reviewed what our calendar was about. All those X’s were days and days Jesus would have had nothing to eat and had no friends or family with him out in the desert.

Our interest never waned, because we also had a treasure box with “Something” inside we would all get on Day 40! Each week we marked our calendar at the beginning of class and remembered Jesus going without food all that time. And we wondered what might be in our box…?

On Day 40, all the children knew it was The Day as we gathered in our room. We remembered again what the rows of X’s were and why we were counting 40 days. The anticipated moment arrived, and the contents of the treasure box were poured into a large clear container so everybody could easily see what the “Something” was they had been waiting for. Small colorful spiky balls tumbled out to a happy welcome – but waited for distribution until the end of class!

The catch here is “colorful.” There are no packages of party favor spiky balls that are all red or all blue or all purple, and it’s too expensive to buy enough packages for everyone to choose their favorite color. Into the Feely Box went the prizes. (Directions for the “Feely Box” follow.) Not everybody got the color they LOVE, but they could see that the process was fair, and they made their own choice. We went home happy!

It was a long wait for preschoolers, and not all of them will carry forward a clear idea of “40 days,” but some of them will, and they all enjoyed the experience.

How to Make a “Feely Box”

This idea was in the kindergarten guide we used twenty-five years ago. The unit on the five senses included directions for making a “Feely Box” as part of a sense of touch activity. The resulting item has been great for all kinds of “secret drawing” uses over the years.

To make a “Feely Box” –

·         Wash an empty 2-liter bottle. You’ll need the kind with an opaque plastic cover on the bottom part. (The totally clear ones don’t work as well.) I don’t buy anything in 2-liter bottles these days, but I’d be willing to count it a teaching materials expense to buy a cheap knock-off cola and pour the contents down the drain to get the bottle! But that’s me.

·         Cut off the top, leaving about half an inch of the curved part above the body of the bottle. Now you can dry the inside really well.

·         Cut the foot off a dark-colored knee sock. (A tube sock might be okay.)

·         Work the sock down over the bottle so the stretchy opening is at the top and the clear part of the bottle is covered by the sock.

·         Reach your hand in to check the opening. If the cut edge is scratchy, smooth with sandpaper, steel wool, emery board…whatever. Cut off a little more of the top if the opening is too small.

To use as a “Feely Box,” place tactile items inside. Reach in, and attempt to identify them by touch. Or use the finished project to draw names, Bible verses, song titles, numbers, choose party favors…you name it!

41 Years - The Back Story

My family had been attending a Bible-centered church for several months when my children’s ministry experience was initiated by a tap on the shoulder. Our previous on-and-off churchiness had been in the context of a small mainline denominational congregation of about 50 people in the tiny town where we lived. Mostly, the Sneed kids walked the short block to Sunday School and came back home before the sermon part to one of Mom’s wonderful Sunday dinners. Every summer we faithfully attended Bible School and learned all our memory verses. For a town of 200 people, Greensboro is as well-supplied as some Bible Belt communities, with three churches a stone’s throw apart!



“We heard you can play the piano,” whispered a gentleman I did not yet know. “Our Children’s Church piano player isn’t here this morning. Do you think you could help?” I was 14 years old and young in the Lord, but even in my merely religious mode I had enjoyed being helpful. This was an opportunity to serve in a meaningful way. In the Lord’s kindness, my note-reading skills are supplemented by the ability to “play by ear,” so I managed a few songs the teachers and I had in common. As it turned out, the other young pianist had started attending elsewhere, and I spent the next three years in the church basement accompanying the younger section of Children’s Church in their singing efforts. My unusual name stymied a few of them. One little boy insisted it was “Kneesock.” (In my case, at least, “Necia” rhymes with “Lisa.”) It was a great introduction to children’s ministry!



Now is a long way from then, both in years and in terms of experience and theological maturity, but I still enjoy children as much as I did at 14. There have been Sunday School and VBS and summer camp and Children’s Church experiences with children of all ages along the way, plus umpteen years of homeschooling, but the bulk of my tenure has been in church basements and munchkin chairs with children in the 3-9-year-old range.



For the past ten years, my under-4-feet friends have been the 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds at Tabor Baptist Church near Daleville, Indiana. Our domain is the basement of the older section of our building where we can sing loud and clap with enthusiasm and disturb no one. We can be Wise Men following battery-powered tea light paths. We can hunt for lost sheep until we find them all. We can learn to know God, to know ourselves as sinners who desperately need Him, and to know Jesus, the Good Shepherd who welcomes “anyone who hears his voice and follows after him.”



Between that tap on the shoulder and now, the history of me has wound its way from Greensboro to Chattanooga, hovered in Atlanta, and settled back home again in Indiana. The Celestial City is my future address, and teaching children about the Lord of that City in a winsome way is the desire of my heart.

Mother's Day is THIS Sunday? - Cards and Projects

Lofty ideas about an initial post to start this blog were in the works and are likely to appear…eventually…but then Mother’s Day was coming fast, and the thought of teachers like me scrambling between now and Sunday for a card or craft turned into Post #1. My Denver child is here this week, and, anticipating his visit, I did an uncharacteristic thing and prepared ahead for Mother’s Day, so I have the luxury of doing this instead of scrambling!

Some years my class of preschoolers have made a craft or given a small gift, but our typical project is coloring Mother’s Day cards. Since this is my very first attempt at a blog post, it's time for Plan B where there would have been an attachment or link to a sample card in my files. This will take more time than printing out a document would have, but it isn't hard. Free greeting card templates are available online. I haven't test-driven any of them, so take your pick. It's also possible to build a template using MSWord text boxes, which is what I did.

For the coloring art for the front of the card, also head to the Internet. Zillions...well, a lot...of free coloring images and pages are easy to find. Go to Google, and chose “Images” at the top left. Type into the search window, “coloring Mother’s Day.” You can limit the results even further by selecting “line drawings” from the menu on the left when the first results page appears. The heart with flowers that would have been on the sample can be, I hope, found here. "Mommy" can be placed in the heart using a text box, and this is the message we used inside:

Flowers for how nice you are;

A heart to help me say,

“I love you, Mommy!

You’re the best!

Happy Mother’s Day!”

Our card also had Proverbs 31:29a printed on the page opposite the verse. Look up your favorite version at www.biblegateway.com, hopefully here.

Another easy and practical idea that is very budget friendly recognizes the custom of displaying treasured child accomplishments on refrigerators. Supplies are economy-grade clear sheet protectors, one per child, and a roll or two of adhesive magnetic strip. Each child needs 4 magnet pieces cut about an inch long. It would be easy to be way ahead of me here and on the way out the door to buy supplies, but, just in case, here are the directions:

Ahead of time, trim the punch-hole section from each sheet protector, being careful not to cut into the seam. (You may need to pull out a tiny remaining strip of white.) This is a scissors task even older children would find hard to do successfully. All ages can mount the magnet strips, but younger ones may need help with proper placement, and it does matter. Place one magnet strip snugly in each corner on the side that is to be the back. The display sleeve is ready to show off school papers, art projects, etc. Insert a Mother’s Day-themed coloring sheet the child has colored, and it’s suddenly a personalized gift for Mom!

By itself or as the insert for the sheet protector project above, your class can create a simple handprint memento. Have the children outline both hands with crayon on a sheet of card stock with this poem already centered near the top of the page:

Jesus’ hands were once

About the size mine are today.

He used His hands the way I do,

To help, to work, to play,

But Jesus never hit or pinched

or pushed to get his way.

Not once, when He was just my size,

Did Jesus disobey.

A Mother’s Day idea we enjoyed a few years ago costs more than printing supplies but not a king’s ransom. This one is just a gift, not a project. You bring the goods, and the children happily hand off to Mom!

 
Purchase glass vases about 3-inches tall. (My Wal-Mart carries the one pictured and ordered the number I needed for my class. Last time I checked, they cost a little over a dollar each. The first ones I bought were about 60-cents each, but we digress...) The vase that inspired the idea was a wedding reception favor, and it turned out to be a genius device when Sara was little. We called it our “dandelion vase.” When it was full, that was it for dandelions until the next day! The rest got to stay in the yard at least 24 hours longer. The children presented their vases with this poem on a small piece of paper, rolled and tucked inside:

Children love to bring in flowers

To light up Mommy’s face,

So every Mommy needs to have

A dandelion vase.

If you have time, good weather, and a sudden wave of bravery, take the children outside to pick dandelions for their vases.  

Happy teaching on Mother’s Day!

I am forced by copyright regulations to say this post is c.2011NeciaSneedRamsey. Thanks!