He just turned five years old. Sitting in the back of his family's station wagon, on Sunday morning while they were driving back from a mid-winter vacation, he asked his father, "I wonder what Daniel is talking about this morning." This young boy attends our family services usually sitting in front and squirming with his sister in the pew. Sometimes I see him mouthing the words to a hymn he couldn't possibly know. Sometimes he looks up and gives me a big toothless smile. He usually wanders up to the food collection basket during our family service and drops boxes of spaghetti with a clunk and crash on the cans of soup and deviled ham. At the chapel door after the benediction he offers his tiny hand and slaps me five on his way up the stairs to the snack table. All the outward signs are that this young boy couldn't possibly be remotely interested or know what was going on in our little chapel. And then two weeks ago his father told me the story of their drive home when he put together that it was a church school Sunday morning and that he might miss me telling a story he might like in the chapel. I mailed him my notes when I heard the story. They became a bedtime story and source of conversation one night last week in that family's home.

Some parents say that their children are their spiritual guides. The freshness and clarity with which they see things are often so sure and insightful that we adults seem surprised when they connect for themselves or for us completely disparate moments and ideas in life. One young girl before last New Year's asked me quite candidly, "Is the world going to end on New Year's eve next year?" I was stunned by the freshness of the view that the world could come to an end and that the question wasn't silly. Before I could say anything she answered her own question, saying, "Well anyway we shouldn't be in airplanes that night," and she easily turned and wandered off to do something else.

It is easy sometimes to see children and forget that they also have lives, thoughts, good questions, emotional ups and downs, and like us are constantly working out the why's and how's of life. I am constantly learning from the children in our church school. I feel blessed that I can be in their presence and minister not only amongst you but among them as well. If you don't have children in your life I urge you to spend some time in a museum or park observing children or better yet interacting with them. See the joy they take in each other and in the things around them. See if they are asking questions that wouldn't occur to you. See how play for them can also be learning and socializing.

"Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven." (Matt 18:3).

I think this is one way to view Easter. With resurrection comes new life. What shape does that take in us? What can be resurrected in us that is child-like, fresh and joyful? What have we left behind that we now think of as childish that might be returned as childlike in an adult world? What might we see if we examine the world as children do?

Play, laugh, ask, wonder, see, hear, taste anew. Happy Easter!

Daniel