Images of Community
How do we help ALL children find their place in God’s story?
As we come into this time of year, we find some unique opportunities to focus on learning about and celebrating various groups of people who have been traditionally marginalized in American culture. November is Indigenous People’s Heritage month. February is Black History month. March is Women’s History month. May is Asian Pacific American Heritage month. These designated months are a cultural effort to rectify centuries of dehumanizing people (both individually and collectively) that belong to these groups. As we seek to help all children find their place in God’s story, we’ve had to engage the ways that this dehumanization has influenced what and how the Church teaches children about God and themselves. If all people are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), how do we help children to see themselves as created in the image of God – see God in themselves and themselves in God? We can say those words, read them to children, and insist that it means that all of them are created in the image of God. Yet, if the images that children see in the Bibles they read and the books about God that they have read to them reflect a singular image of God and God’s people, children will develop an imagination that is connected to what they see, not the abstract words we use. Curious about this? Ask the children in your life what God looks like and what it means to them that they are created in the image of the Creator.
Resources to help children see God in themselves and themselves in God
One simple way to help foster a broad imagination in children is to use materials created by a diverse group of people that image God in all the beauty and diversity of humanity that is created in God’s image. Through these visual images, children can learn to see God in themselves and in those around them – in the beauty and goodness of the diversity that God has created. Specifically for this reason, Storyline lessons utilize and incorporate a wide range of picture books. One of our new favorites is The Peace Table: A Storybook Bible by Chrissie Muecke, Jasmin Pittman Morrell and Teresa Kim Pecinovsky (MennoMedia, 2023). It is a beautiful children’s Bible that includes a wide variety of art that makes space for all children to see themselves in God’s story by identifying with people in the Bible who look like them and their friends and neighbors.
