DURING ART CLASS one day, a first-grade teacher noticed that one child was particularly engrossed in his drawing. She eventually wandered over and asked the child, “What are you drawing?”
“God,” he said, without looking up from his paper. The teacher said carefully, “But no one really knows what God looks like.”
“They will in a second!” he said.
I love this story because it captures something we all appreciate, but few of us think to nurture: the spiritual vitality and imagination of young children.
Most parents are keenly aware of their children’s social, emotional, intellectual and physical development. We record our children’s height with pencil marks on the kitchen wall and note milestones in photo albums and scrapbooks. We monitor their health and celebrate their achievements. As they grow older, we track their academic progress.
But how many of us track our children’s spiritual health and development?
In some ways, former generations had it easier. Spirituality was equated with religious practice. Those days are gone.
