Lent is a few days; it begins on Valentine's Day this year. There are endless ways to mark our lives by the life of Christ during Lent and one way many churches have engaged is meditation and prayer using a Labyrinth.
Labyrinths have been around for thousands of years. People have used them for various reasons, but Christians have been using them for prayer since the Middle Ages. Labyrinths have the wonderful possibility of moving prayer into our bodies.
Children are notoriously good at expressing all things with their bodies. Just take a toddler into a lively worship service and their joy will leak out into their bodies and maybe on the floor, but that's another matter.
Today I’m sharing an attempt at a Guided Prayer: The Way of the Cross for children.
Some ways and places for this meditation might be-
· As a guided conversation with God (prayer) while walking a labyrinth
· As guided prayer while engaging the Stations of the Cross
· Older children can use this meditation alone while walking a labyrinth or Stations of the Cross
· Younger children can share the time and meditation with an adult who loves them while walking a labyrinth or Stations of the Cross
Please feel free to print out this guided prayer , fold it in half and offer it to children within your sphere of influence and take a conversational walk with God.
One last reminder, the conversations of children with their God can be private. It’s helpful to keep the words of George MacDonald in mind,
“A parent must respect the spiritual person of his child, and approach it with reverence, for that too looks the Father in the face and has an audience with Him into which no earthly parent can enter even he dared to desire it.”
If a child shares their conversation with God with you, you are on sacred ground indeed. Respect the holiness of that moment by not sharing the conversation with anyone else, unless you receive the child’s permission.
If a child doesn’t share anything with you, you are on sacred ground indeed. Surely we remember from our FFA class that seeds germinate in the rich, secrete space of hiddenness. There is no space where the Spirit is not working up something, even if adults can’t see it.
Yes. Let it be so.