"Until Christ is formed in you": Nurturing the spirituality of children

Theology Today, Apr 1999 by Dawn, Marva J

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is [God's] faithfulness. (Lam 3:22-23)

The key is for us, their parents and mentors, to notice God's goodnesses ourselves and declare them. Our children already perceive the glories of the cosmos more readily than we. Once they have learned the language of grace from us, they will no doubt name its various manifestations eagerly and inspire our faith while deepening their own.

When I attended a Lutheran elementary school (my father was principal), we students learned that all the wonders of mathematics and science, music and literature, art and social studies, and the magnificent world outside our classroom windows originated in God's immense gifts of creation and human creativity. Not only religion classes, but every subject revealed the glory of God, as did our family's travels, Sunday hikes, and outings to art museums and concerts. (Taking our trips by automobile gave us numerous opportunities to see nature's glories; much of that seems to be lost in present practices of "vacations," often too hurried and too consumeroriented to be truly restful or grace-full.)

Another crucial gift of my Lutheran heritage, gained particularly in worship, was a deep sense of the grace of forgiveness. All children know they sin-especially if their consciences are reinforced by accountability-so learning the profuse prodigality of God's absolution was sheer bliss. Parents can teach their offspring when they're quite little how good it is to confess sins and receive forgiveness in personal relationships. Moreover, the historic liturgy was meaningful to me already before I started school especially because at the very beginning of worship services we confessed our wrongdoings, known and unknown, and received pardon. Much later I learned to verbalize Martin Luther's insight that Christians are simul justus et peccator-at the same time justified and still sinners-and frequently now as an educator I see that this doctrine is immensely freeing, especially to teenagers who worry that they can't be "better Christians." Luther valued spiritual growth, of course, but his major discovery was that believers must always depend on the "alien righteousness" of Christ. Thus, we are set free to acknowledge our failures without being overwhelmed by them;ll grace continually gives us the gift of new beginnings.12 As Jurisson explains,

This theological anthropology is a scathingly honest assessment of humanity that does not bifurcate the person into sinful and non-sinful parts. Instead it finds every part of the person, emotions, intellect, and body, tainted with sin, yet it also believes that God's grace is sufficient and God's forgiveness is sure.... Divine reconciliation is so much more than a coping mechanism; it is rather a `hoping mechanism' anchored in the promise of divine forgiveness, embodied in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Only that event, with its promise of divinely initiated reconciliation, makes it possible to put together the shattered pieces of life that human sin has torn asunder.l3