On Tuesday mornings during the school year, I tell a Bible story to the four-year-olds in our church's child care center. Recently I was teaching the boys and girls about how God created the seasons.
I held up a picture of an apple tree that was beginning to grow leaves. The picture showed new flowers blossoming around the tree's trunk. "What season is this?" I asked. They shouted, "Spring!" Then I held up a picture of the tree with lots of leaves and green apples on it, surrounded by lush, green grass. I said, "Notice that the tree is getting apples now. What season is this?" They shouted, "Summer!" Then I showed them a picture of a tree with plump, red apples, but the leaves were turning red and brown, and many leaves had fallen to the ground. I said, "What is happening to the tree?" They said, "The leaves are falling, because it's fall!"
Then I held up a picture of a barren tree with snow on the ground around it. Before I could ask, they all shouted, "Winter!" Being in south Georgia where it rarely snows, I said, "In some parts of the world it snows in winter. And what happened to the tree?" One boy shouted, "It got naked!"
The Bible gives praise for direct honesty. Proverbs 24:26 (God's Word) says, "Giving a straight answer is like a kiss on the lips." Unlike grownups, who give evasive answers and speak in metaphors and euphemisms, kids just tell it like it is. We could learn from their example. Let's just make sure that our honesty is like a kiss on the lips and not a smack on the side of the head!
(Copyright 2010 by Bob Rogers.)
