A Child’s Innocence

My role in our Slice of Summer Kids’ Camp this summer is the floater. This means that I pretty much help where I am needed. On this past Thursday, this happened to be with the third and fourth grade group. The reason is because its a large group and there are several campers who have a little difficulty containing their excitement in a classroom setting. Knowing this, I was prepared to spend most of morning trying to help keep some order in the group and hopefully reduce the chaos.

The first activity after a little small group freeze dance time was art. The project for the day was to think about a bible verse and then draw what you thought represented that verse. The verse was 1 John 4:16: “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him.”

Seeing a blank paper sitting in front of one of the energetic boys, P, I went to his table. Making assumptions about P from the previous time I had spent with him, I had simple goals for the next 20 minutes: keep him in or near his chair and avoid letting him distract others. Hopefully by the end of the activity he would have some sort of drawing on his paper.

I read the verse to the table again and asked P what came to mind when he heard it. In a moment P changed from a loud, spirited kid to a curious, innocent little boy. He spent the remainder of art asking countless questions about God, forgiveness, and creation. How old is God? What does He look like? Does God love everyone? How could He make man from nothing? Does He seriously forgive us no matter what?

This little boy, who minutes before had been breaking out the hip hop dance moves,

began asking these questions about God’s love and listening intently to each and every answer. As I answered them the best I could, my opinion about what I should have had on my list of goals for those 20 minutes changed drastically. I had forgotten the one thing so many people have told us we are here this summer to do: love. Somehow as I worried about bathroom breaks, paint stains, and opening ranch packets that goal had gotten pushed to the back. It’s the little gifts God gives us that remind why He brought us here this summer. This one came in the form of a little third grader’s innocent curiosity. Somehow that is just what I needed that day to remind me to live in love.

~Danielle