Gifts - 4th/5th Grade Style

With only twelve kids this week, and nothing "different" going on in main service, we managed to hit that sweet spot once again - where major holidays are over, spring is coming, and they're growing enough to start putting words behind questions and feelings.

(That being said, don't come into the group expecting to suddenly see innocent angel children. It's still the same messy group, just able to verbalize a few more things and trust a little more openly. And...sometimes they all decide to verbalize at once. :D Yeah. I can totally hear all twelve of you at the same time. Not so much.)

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"Oh! I think I had a prophecy!" One of the boys jumps into the the middle of my sentence. "When I was still in California, I had a dream about what our new house was going to look like, and, then, when we got here, it was exactly the same as my dream."
His eyes are glowing as he shares the story with me us, and eleven kids sit up a little straighter to hear how I answer him. They've already heard some stories from me, but now, for a fleetingly few minutes, they want to check and make sure that they get it.

He waits a heartbeat. "It was kind of weird."

This is one of those moments where they waver between little kid faith and a pre-teen desire to be cool, to be normal, to be whatever it is that their friends think that they're supposed to be.

"Yeah. It can seem weird, but this stuff is totally for real." His focus is back on me, waiting, watching. "Isn't it cool that God gave you that tool, so that moving would be easier?"

Markers around the circle stop moving as he finally nods, and the smile in his eyes reaches down to the rest of his face. "Yeah."

We're talking about spiritual gifts as "tools" to do life well, sitting on the floor in the hallway, surrounded by the jungle animals that they drug over, markers and paper spread everywhere, in a tight clump that is really only a circle by virtue of the fact that it is not a square. Their notes look like anything and everything you can imagine, bulleted lists, presents with the different gifts popping out, stick figures, random squiggles. But, one of the girls manages to sum it up well.

Her page is labeled "Spiritual Gifts" across the top, and, under a picture is the phrase, "Whatever God tells you to do, do it."

Yep. That will pretty much cover it.

(The main curriculum is talking about conviction, about not being afraid to stand up for things.Our small group tends to take its own tangents, and this conversation has been several weeks in the making.)