Speech given at St. John's Presbyterian Church on Sunday September 28
Carla Shalaby, in her book Troublemakers, talks about the canary that coal miners would take down in the mines with them in the early twentieth century. You see, a canary’s lungs are much smaller and much more sensitive than ours. The miners knew that if the canary was suffering it was time to get out of the mine to save themselves before the levels of carbon monoxide became too high. Shalaby then equates these canaries to our children. What are our children saying to us about the way they exist in the world? Are we listening? How should we change our world to better support them?
We want the best for our children and youth, that is no secret. And in order to prepare them to be stewards of the world, we need to do 3 things. 1. We must love our children, and I mean really love them, no matter what. 2. we must listen when they speak to us, not just when it’s convenient for us, and especially when they are hurting. and 3. we must show our love and our listening skills through action.
Love is a revolutionary act. But I am sure this is not new information for you. As Christians this fact is (or at least it should be) ingrained in our very being. The first few bible passages I remember learning as a child were love your neighbor, and love your enemy. And let’s not forget “For God so loved the world…” There’s an entire chapter 13 in 1 Chorinithains that literally tells us exactly what love is. Depending on the translation, the word love is mentioned in the bible between 514 and 810 times. If there’s anything we can boil down to “the” thing to do, love is it. Sometimes we forget, however, that love looks different to different people. We can get caught up in how we like to be shown love, and tend to just show love the same way, but sometimes that can get lost in translation.
Part of my educational background is in psychology, and it is there that I became fascinated with love languages. It’s a school of thought that there are 5 basic ways that love manifests itself in our actions. They are: words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, physical touch, and quality time. And the way you most often show love, may not be the way another person recognizes at being shown love. I have found, working with children, that I sometimes assume that the kids should recognize my acts of service as me loving them. For example, why don’t you appreciate the fact that I feed and clothe you. But it can be difficult for children really know or understand all the work that goes into keeping them alive because that is not their job. They expect you to do that stuff, because they can’t yet do it for themselves. So those things we see as love they just see as part of your job as a parent (or adult that is caring for them). We need to recognize that every child is different, they are not all going to respond the same way to the love we give. We need to love children the way they need to be loved, not the way we think they should love us.
Before we are born, before we ever see the light of day, we can hear. Babies in the womb can recognize the sounds and the intonation of the people speaking around them. Before we can sit up by ourselves we can recognize familiar versus unfamiliar voices and sounds. As children, we spend a lot of time listening. Did you know that listen and silent are spelled with the same letters? We ask our children to be silent when they listen to us, but are we silent when we listen to them. A lot of the things we ask children to do when we are talking to them, we need to mirror when they are talking to us. We need to be active listeners. Things like eye contact, being free of distractions, repeating what they have said and asking open ended questions are essential to being active listeners. When we listen actively, we show our children that what they have to say matters - and we want to hear it. Sometimes all a child needs is to know someone cares about what they have to say. Jesus said let the children come to me. In order to live our lives in his likeness, we should let the children come, and listen to them, really listen. Our world is full of distractions, and it is not easy to set them aside, but our children deserve our full attention.
Action is a very tight rope to walk. You may have heard about lawnmower parents who just push out any obstacle their child may face without teaching them how to get over it. We don’t want to cut out all adversity our children may face, because our children will not grow. On the other hand, we do not want them to suffer unnecessary hardship, especially before they are ready or have the tools to overcome them. Our actions must be informed and intentional. And we must start with Love and Listening before we can make action that is truly good and right for our children. The trick is not to act for what we think they need, but rather what they have told us they need! I know that sometimes we make decisions in their best interest, but at some point we need to trust that they know and we owe it to them to help them thrive doing what they want.
We owe them that much. They have been brought into this world not by their own volition, but through the promise that someone is going to fight for them until they can do it for themselves. But our children are fighting for their lives earlier and earlier. Our young people have organized massive protests around gun violence and climate change. We have robbed them of their childhood by putting this responsibility on them. These are issues that our country should have fixed long before our children had to cry out and tell us that we are killing them. Our children and youth are prepared to fight. They want to do the work that we should have done. And we owe it to them to love, listen, and stand with them in this fight.
Now I don’t want to leave you without giving you something to help yourself as well. In the same way that we have to listen to them, we must listen to ourselves. Be kind to yourself, and show humbleness to our children. It is okay to be a little vulnerable with our children, we can own up to mistakes that we have made. We can model the way, show our children how to get through conflict instead of avoiding it. We can also use more we and less me or you or them. We can get through this together. We can make lasting change. We can show everyone that Love is far greater than everything. It must always be we. We are it. God did not create us to work alone. God created us to work together. No one person can go it alone. As the African Proverb says: “If you want to go fast, go alone if you want to go far, go together.”
Our children are hurting. And we have ignored their cries for too long. Our children need us to not just care for them, but to care about them. They need us to not just satisfy their basic needs, but they need us to want them to succeed. And we need to listen to them for what they believe their success means. We must love and accept our children for who they are. We must listen to our children. In the same way the miners listened to the canary. We must believe them when they tell us that something is wrong. We must help them to make it right. We are living in a constantly changing world, and our children are already prepared to change with it. So we must change too, so that we can better love them, listen to them, and help them achieve great things.
God did not create this world for us to live in for us to destroy it before we reach the promised land. Show your love, live your truth, and be fearless in your faith to make this world a better place.
Carla Shalaby, in her book Troublemakers, talks about the canary that coal miners would take down in the mines with them in the early twentieth century. You see, a canary’s lungs are much smaller and much more sensitive than ours. The miners knew that if the canary was suffering it was time to get out of the mine to save themselves before the levels of carbon monoxide became too high. Shalaby then equates these canaries to our children. What are our children saying to us about the way they exist in the world? Are we listening? How should we change our world to better support them?
We want the best for our children and youth, that is no secret. And in order to prepare them to be stewards of the world, we need to do 3 things. 1. We must love our children, and I mean really love them, no matter what. 2. we must listen when they speak to us, not just when it’s convenient for us, and especially when they are hurting. and 3. we must show our love and our listening skills through action.
Love is a revolutionary act. But I am sure this is not new information for you. As Christians this fact is (or at least it should be) ingrained in our very being. The first few bible passages I remember learning as a child were love your neighbor, and love your enemy. And let’s not forget “For God so loved the world…” There’s an entire chapter 13 in 1 Chorinithains that literally tells us exactly what love is. Depending on the translation, the word love is mentioned in the bible between 514 and 810 times. If there’s anything we can boil down to “the” thing to do, love is it. Sometimes we forget, however, that love looks different to different people. We can get caught up in how we like to be shown love, and tend to just show love the same way, but sometimes that can get lost in translation.
Part of my educational background is in psychology, and it is there that I became fascinated with love languages. It’s a school of thought that there are 5 basic ways that love manifests itself in our actions. They are: words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, physical touch, and quality time. And the way you most often show love, may not be the way another person recognizes at being shown love. I have found, working with children, that I sometimes assume that the kids should recognize my acts of service as me loving them. For example, why don’t you appreciate the fact that I feed and clothe you. But it can be difficult for children really know or understand all the work that goes into keeping them alive because that is not their job. They expect you to do that stuff, because they can’t yet do it for themselves. So those things we see as love they just see as part of your job as a parent (or adult that is caring for them). We need to recognize that every child is different, they are not all going to respond the same way to the love we give. We need to love children the way they need to be loved, not the way we think they should love us.
Before we are born, before we ever see the light of day, we can hear. Babies in the womb can recognize the sounds and the intonation of the people speaking around them. Before we can sit up by ourselves we can recognize familiar versus unfamiliar voices and sounds. As children, we spend a lot of time listening. Did you know that listen and silent are spelled with the same letters? We ask our children to be silent when they listen to us, but are we silent when we listen to them. A lot of the things we ask children to do when we are talking to them, we need to mirror when they are talking to us. We need to be active listeners. Things like eye contact, being free of distractions, repeating what they have said and asking open ended questions are essential to being active listeners. When we listen actively, we show our children that what they have to say matters - and we want to hear it. Sometimes all a child needs is to know someone cares about what they have to say. Jesus said let the children come to me. In order to live our lives in his likeness, we should let the children come, and listen to them, really listen. Our world is full of distractions, and it is not easy to set them aside, but our children deserve our full attention.
Action is a very tight rope to walk. You may have heard about lawnmower parents who just push out any obstacle their child may face without teaching them how to get over it. We don’t want to cut out all adversity our children may face, because our children will not grow. On the other hand, we do not want them to suffer unnecessary hardship, especially before they are ready or have the tools to overcome them. Our actions must be informed and intentional. And we must start with Love and Listening before we can make action that is truly good and right for our children. The trick is not to act for what we think they need, but rather what they have told us they need! I know that sometimes we make decisions in their best interest, but at some point we need to trust that they know and we owe it to them to help them thrive doing what they want.
We owe them that much. They have been brought into this world not by their own volition, but through the promise that someone is going to fight for them until they can do it for themselves. But our children are fighting for their lives earlier and earlier. Our young people have organized massive protests around gun violence and climate change. We have robbed them of their childhood by putting this responsibility on them. These are issues that our country should have fixed long before our children had to cry out and tell us that we are killing them. Our children and youth are prepared to fight. They want to do the work that we should have done. And we owe it to them to love, listen, and stand with them in this fight.
Now I don’t want to leave you without giving you something to help yourself as well. In the same way that we have to listen to them, we must listen to ourselves. Be kind to yourself, and show humbleness to our children. It is okay to be a little vulnerable with our children, we can own up to mistakes that we have made. We can model the way, show our children how to get through conflict instead of avoiding it. We can also use more we and less me or you or them. We can get through this together. We can make lasting change. We can show everyone that Love is far greater than everything. It must always be we. We are it. God did not create us to work alone. God created us to work together. No one person can go it alone. As the African Proverb says: “If you want to go fast, go alone if you want to go far, go together.”
Our children are hurting. And we have ignored their cries for too long. Our children need us to not just care for them, but to care about them. They need us to not just satisfy their basic needs, but they need us to want them to succeed. And we need to listen to them for what they believe their success means. We must love and accept our children for who they are. We must listen to our children. In the same way the miners listened to the canary. We must believe them when they tell us that something is wrong. We must help them to make it right. We are living in a constantly changing world, and our children are already prepared to change with it. So we must change too, so that we can better love them, listen to them, and help them achieve great things.
God did not create this world for us to live in for us to destroy it before we reach the promised land. Show your love, live your truth, and be fearless in your faith to make this world a better place.
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