Lectionary Links (NL): June 21, 2020
3rd Sunday After Pentecost
Year 2: June 21, 2020
Life Doesn’t Frighten Me by Maya Angelou
(Written for ages 4-8)
Comment: In the passage from chapter 14, Job gives us a concrete image of persistent hope. Even an old, dried-up stump – in which it seems there is no life – may revive once again “at the scent of water.” Even in the times of our life when it seems like there can be no reasonable hope, God can still break through in surprising ways, bringing life into situations where it seemed there was only death. Seemingly hopeless situations can be scary, but Angelou’s poem offers children hope in the face of fear. Shadows, dragons, tough guys, a new classroom – she affirms that these “don’t frighten me at all.” Toward the end of the poem, she explains, “I’ve got a magic charm that I keep up my sleeve, I can walk the ocean floor and never have to breathe.” Since she doesn’t name the lucky charm, we can explore with children what that could be. What helps them to be brave in scary situations? How does our faith give us hope, even when we feel like a dead old tree stump?
Thanks to Joshua Andrzejewski, Union Presbyterian Seminary alumnus and chaplain for the pediatric and women’s health units in the VCU Medical Center, for writing the Year 2 Narrative Lectionary Links.
Lectionary Links (NL): June 21, 2020 by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
