In Ghana we spent a lot of time with kids since we were teaching from 8-2:30 Monday through Thursday. One of our hosts, Abigail, said to us one day, “Children are a gift from God.” When I heard that phrase before, I always thought of it as having your own children (whether biologically or through adoption). So I’ve always thought, that’s something that doesn’t yet have anything to do with me, since I don’t have any kids. But when Abigail said this, I thought, children themselves are a gift, whether they are yours or someone else’s.
There is a lot about children that can be such a blessing to adults. Adults tend to forget what it was like to be a child. But there are things that we shouldn’t forget that were true of us. Here are a few things that we can (re)learn from kids:
They find joy in EVERYTHING. It is so easy to amuse kids or for them to amuse themselves, especially the younger they are. The little kids in the nursery can stay entertained by a game of peek-a-boo forEVER. Even with the group I was with of 9-11 year olds, it was so easy for them to have fun. There was once that we were waiting for the citizenship teacher to come, and the boys next to me were literally just making faces at me, like flaring their nostrils or crossing their eyes, and they were having so much fun. Their joy was infectious and I was cracking up and making faces back at them.
They let go of things pretty quickly. This isn’t a hard and fast rule of course. But generally, they tend to let things go. My class last month was pretty rowdy. All day students came up to me, “Auntie he hit me”, or “Auntie he insulted me” and “Auntie, beat him!”. Yet, not too soon after they would be laughing and playing with each other like nothing ever happened.
They are eager to learn. It was pretty hard to get all the students’ attention at the same time, but many were genuinely trying to learn. And not just the curriculum they were supposed to learn. I taught them the song “Alive” by Hillsong Young + Free (the CF Worship version of course, check it out here) and they wrote down all the lyrics and later sang it for Me. I wrote down the Korean writing system and they took notes. Days after during break students would attempt to write out words in Korean on the board. I taught them to play the hand game Numbers and they not only picked it up quickly but taught so many others that I had random students I had never even met come up to me “Auntie, let’s play.”
Children were truly a gift to me this month. I loved having the same fifteen kids each day and getting to know them all. They were definitely a big part in making last month be such a joyful month for me.
“Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.”
Psalms 127:3 NLT
“and [Jesus] said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:3-4 ESV
Jessica
