Spiritual Conversations With ChildrenExemplo

Listening to God as Relationship

The struggle for power is an old one. The Synoptic Gospels all record a scrap between the disciples over who is the greatest. In one account James and John even got their mother in on the power grab. Jesus taught that there could be a different pattern for power. 

The disciples struggled to wrap their minds and their bodies around this new reality. Jesus, knowing that bodies are “personal power packages” created to carry out the will of the human spirit, offered his struggling friends a bodily example of another way to deal with power: he brought a child into their midst. 

The struggle for power goes all the way back to Eve and Adam in Eden. Why would God, who clearly has all the power, yield his power for a chance at a relationship with the very beings he created? Eve and Adam had an intimate relationship with God and with each other until the seeds of mistrust prompted them to use their human will to exchange relationship for the power to rule. The destructive power pattern is about who will rule, who is in control,  and who is the greatest. The power structure Jesus was helping his disciples learn is about relationship. The God who generously gave human beings their power to choose (will) is in pursuit of human relationship, not human rule.

In an act of grace, God placed in all of humanity an essential orientation toward relationship. The most powerful drive a child has is for relationship. With these power packages—bodies—we participate in a pattern of power. There is a movement and exchange of power in every human interaction. As we seek to engage in spiritual conversations with children, we must be cognizant of the power in the room, and like Jesus, if we want relationship rather than rule, we must shift the power. 

How can you shift your power toward relationship today?