I learnt something from a child at our 5 Alive All-Age Service in October. We have been working through Brian McLaren’s book ‘We Make the Road by Walking’ at a rate of one chapter per month. Yesterday we reached Chapter 11 ‘From ugliness a beauty arises’ in which McLaren contrasts the conquest of Canaan in the book of Joshua with Matthew 15:21-39. In the Matthew passage Jesus heals the daughter of a Canaanite woman and goes on to feed 4000 in the local area, after which 7 baskets of leftovers are collected (signifying the 7 tribes who were displaced from the Promised Land). The Biblical narrative moves from one where God sides with ‘US’ against ‘THEM’ to one where all are included. God loves everyone, everywhere, no exceptions. 

It was a challenge to communicate all of that in the space of one hour to a diverse congregation but we decided to try. We have used Godly Play story scripts to tell the Exodus and the Ten Best Ways (10 Commandments) in previous months so I attempted to write a script to tell the story of the conquest. We handed out maps and pictures to help people visualise what happened.  Then we briefly summarised the Matthew account and we did a prayer reflection on Isaiah 2 – the ‘swords to ploughs’ passage, which involved shaping pipecleaners into swords and then reshaping them into symbols of hope for a future that would have ‘no more tears or pain’.

After the service a group of about 5 boys hung around to work with the desert bag and the story materials (the Ark of the Covenant, 12 stones, a sword and ribbon and blue material to depict the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, Dead Sea and Mediterranean). They found it hard to share, each wanting to do something different. One boy suddenly looked up and said ‘This is what it was like in the story – everyone wanted the land and they didn’t know how to share’. His Mum then gave them a ‘two minutes’ warning before they had to leave. The boy said ‘OK, everybody join in but try not to spoil each others work, we can do this!‘

So what did I learn? That everyone wants to protect ‘me’ and ‘mine’ often at the exclusion of ‘them’ and ‘theirs’. But if a child can see the problem of fighting over things and can take action to include and share, that gives me hope that all of us adults can do the same. We just need to be willing to try.

Mandy Aspland