THEY’RE WATCHING …

Because church was crowded Sunday morning,  I needed to move right next to a young girl I’ve never seen before. She was about eight or nine, blonde hair, black-rimmed glasses. Cute. When I moved, I made sure she and her mom (who was sitting on the other side of her) weren’t saving the seat for anyone. I joked  about it as I moved my stuff.

Later, when we were asked to greet those around us, she shook my hand.

During the sermon, however, I could tell her attention was wandering in and out and she was growing restless. She bumped into me several times as she squirmed in her seat. I was taking notes as I usually do and not paying that much attention to her. (I’m used to kids – squirmy kids – and their wiggles don’t bother me all that much.)

Suddenly she was quiet. I looked at her. She looked at me. She looked at my notes. She took her mom’s worship folder and turned it to the blank page and began copying the power point slide exactly as I was doing. I could tell she wanted her’s to look like mine.

But then the pastor got to the next point — and the next slide — before she had caught up with her copying.

So I bent down and showed her my own notes, helping her with the words she didn’t get.

She beamed. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome,” I whispered back.

I had given her a smile and a word of encouragement and that’s all it had taken to get her to stop wiggling and pay attention to what was happening up front. (The message was about Mary – an easy one for her to understand.)

I was even more excited to see her mom click in  – and for the rest of the service,  help her daughter with her notes.  I hope the girl will continue taking notes in future services.

Young kids love to copy words – and young kids like to imitate adults.

If you don’t take notes in church, why not start? And encourage your children to do the same.

One smile and a word of encouragement from you could be all they need to pay attention and learn something from the message.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 9:38 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.