This year’s theme for our family weekend’s children’s program was the Armor of God from Ephesians 6. Throughout five sessions, our kids learned about the belt of truth, the shoes of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. I led the younger class (ages 4-7) and as it turns out, the fundamentals of truth, faith, and salvation are a little too deep for that group. As the weekend went on, the priority and emphasis for each session slowly shifted from hitting all of the points in a lesson to making sure the kids knew that Jesus loves them.
It started to matter less if a lesson went well or not or if the kids were able to recite the memory verse, and matter more if they knew that they are loved, and just how much they are loved. The focus turned from head knowledge to heart knowledge.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13
I don’t know if those kids learned a lot about the armor of God, but I hope that in spending time with their leaders and each other, they know that they are loved and they are loved by God. I also hope that we didn’t scare away our children’s helpers.