We had a fantastic Art and Music Camp last week at New Beginnings UMC with 21 children attending. Besides the Art Classes and Music classes, I had to create an activity each day. I asked my 9 year-old niece, McKenna, for advice and she told me to be sure to dance the Hokey-Pokey (so I did as often as time would allow). We played games with a parachute, looked at three Cooper hawks in the back (on animal day) and planted tomatoes in the community garden in the back of our field. We danced, prayed, sang, and played games both inside and outside. I showed them how to use a crank-ice cream maker and we ate a watermelon together.
The best day was Tuesday when we spent the entire time talking about how much Jesus loves each one of them. I tried to keep it simple, but needless to say the kids took it into another direction. They pressed me with some deep theological questions and I gave them my best responses (boy, my head hurt afterwards lol). It amazes me how they argue like the professor in an article on my Facebook page trying to understand what was before God. I explained to them, “The Lord our God was–before there was time and place. He is much bigger than time and space and is not limited by them. So the question of “What was there before God?” is simply not a valid question. There was no such time as time before God…there was God before there was time. They had the same facial expressions as a previous youth director, named Troy Ayers, when we discussed the fact that God sees past, present, and future all in one movement. He said, “Wow, that blows my mind!” I saw the same look on the kids’ faces!