Today’s lesson: prayer, a loving conversation with god.
September 1, 2012: Week 1 of this lesson at our neighbourhood children’s class. As is often the case when starting new classes, we had a wide range of ages, from 5 to 12 (!). All the children present were cousins living in the same apartment building. To start off, we explained that we would be starting the class with prayers, and engaged the children in a brief conversation about why we pray. As often happens, the older children (in this case, junior youth—11 and 12 years old) answered more readily.
Prayer is when we talk to God, they offered. Sometimes we ask Him for help when we have trouble or when we need something. We talked about the love of God, and how it motivates us to pray, just like we feel motivated to talk to a person we love, to tell them how much we love them. Since we were talking about God, we spoke a little about His nature. Some of the children began to volunteer descriptions of Him, for example, as a man with a long beard, “just like Santa Claus.” Another added, “I think he has green skin. Like an alien.” We explained that although we can converse with God through prayer, His essence is unknowable to us. For that reason, we should try not to make images of God in our minds, thinking of him as a man, alien or otherwise.
One of the older children then asked: Why is it that some people don’t believe in God? After all, we had just finished talking about how God loves us dearly. Why would people turn away from that love and reject God? We replied by noting that when we make images of God in our mind, these are merely the product of our imagination, and they will always fall short of describing Him. For instance, one person might think of God as an old, bearded man—but how could a mere man hear everyone’s prayers, all the time? Perhaps, then, it is this confusion that turns people away.
After prayers, we presented the quote, concentrating on the first part: “Intone, O My servant, the verses of God that have been received by thee”, and explaining some of the heavy words. Most of the children speak English as a second language, so we’ll be trying to work slowly but steadily on this. We played a game to help us memorize the quote—each child memorized a couple of words and would stand up each time he heard those words, sitting down when the next words were read. For example, one child would stand up at “Intone”; he would sit down and the next child would sit up at “O My servant”; and so on. We did this faster and faster, changing places in our circle, and then even lining up in a row. We’ll be playing similar active games in the next few weeks to help us along.
We continued by reading the story of Ruhu’lláh, which is a beautiful story showing how the devotion he showed in praying touched the heart of an official who was threatening his father. I feel like I was a little out of practice in telling stories, so I didn’t tell it as well as I could, but we can try again next time. After the story was over, we adjourned outside and played a lively game of extreme hopscotch—hopscotch with disconnected numbers all over the place.
The funny thing about this lesson was that since it was about prayer, we could start discussing the lesson before we even started with prayers, and it actually helped to set the tone when we said our opening prayer, enhancing the reverent atmosphere. We’ll be trying to focus on keeping this going and encouraging the children to make a habit of praying each day.