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Hello, dear church -
This past week we celebrated All Saints' Day throughout the church, remembering those who have died that influenced our life of faith. A joy of my job here at Oak Grove is to lead preschool chapel. I love that Oak Grove is passionate about teaching our children the stories and traditions of our Christian faith. Now, a key instruction I have been given is to not talk in chapel about anything violent or about death. (I don't know if you have read the Bible recently, but there is a lot of it that does not fit within those parameters!) So, for All Saints' Day, I struggled with how to talk about the day without mentioning death. Because while death is a key part of our lives, especially our eternal lives, I can also agree that it might not be best to teach to a group rambunctious 2 through 6-year-olds at 9am on a school day. So how do we teach this day to our kids? The answer: pipe cleaners and song.
God bless Miss Mandy and the organized children's ministry closet of wonders! With her and Miss Nancy's help, we created some quick halos out of gold pipe cleaners. In chapel, I had some brave volunteers come up to put halos on their heads and share who wears halos. "Angels!" was the resounding answer. I shared that in art, the saints always have halos around their heads, too, and saints are people who share God's love with others. I then had the kids turn to each other and say, "God loves you!" Ta-da! This makes them all saints, too! And what song do saints sing? That's right - "When the Saints Go Marching In." It brought such joy to my heart to see that a holy day that is often only somber (which is okay, too!), can also be celebrated with jubilation and song.
So, my friends, I offer to you this: have you shared God's love with someone? Then you, too, are a saint! And while I might not have enough gold pipe cleaner halos to go around, I can assure that I want to be in that number with you and these preschoolers when all us saints go marching in.
Thanks be to God,
Pastor Britney
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