As a child, my parents told me that I was not old enough to take Communion. I cannot remember what the reason they gave was, but they made it out to be a ‘thing you do when you get older’. When I started at a Catholic high school not long before my eleventh birthday, I was faced with a problem. We attended mass weekly for the intermediate years, and most of my classmates, having gone through the Catholic rite of First Communion in primary school, were eligible to participate in Communion. My parents told me to refrain from participating.

To be honest, I didn’t really know when I was supposed to start partaking in Communion. I made a decision for Christ when I was eleven, but I still wasn’t allowed to for several years. As far as I know, however, I don’t think my parents knew I had made a decision for Christ at that stage. (I now consider myself fortunate for being able to bypass Communion at mass, because I had my first (and last) Communion wafer at my Grandmother’s Catholic funeral when I was fourteen and it was disgusting. I haven’t had Communion at a Catholic mass since.)

Being an adult serving in Children’s Ministry, and having participated in communion at my own church for many years now, I recently gave the matter some thought. I believe that children should be allowed to participate in communion if they wish to do so, regardless of the opinion of their parents.

The origins of communion lie in the Jewish family meal known as the Passover. This meal dates back to the time of Moses, commemorating and celebrating the Jewish exodus from Egypt, which brought freedom for the Israelites. The Passover is a feast that is celebrated as a family, by the whole family, children included. Children in Jewish families were brought up from birth learning about how God delivered their nation from slavery and into the Promised Land.

Here we can draw parallels between the Jewish celebration of the Passover and the Christian celebration of Communion. We celebrate Communion to remember how Jesus delivered us from our slavery to sin and brought us into his kingdom. This belief is at the centre of the Christian faith, and we teach it to our children from a very young age. It makes no sense, then, that we should exclude children from Communion, when we should be celebrating, as a family, and as a church family, what Jesus has done for all of us. Salvation is not exclusive to adults. Children are as much a part of the church family as adults. If a child understands what Jesus has done, then they should be allowed to participate in the celebration of it.

Setting some sort of cut-off age is dangerous because it gives the impression that one has to reach a certain age before they are fully accepted into the church family and have the same privileges as adults. Every child will be ready at a different age, and it is up to the child to decide whether they wish to participate or not. Even if they do not understand fully the meaning of the celebration, they should still be able to participate as it will be part of the learning process for them. If very young Jewish children participate in the Passover with their family before they fully grasp its meaning, then why can’t we give our children the same opportunity? I have joined in family celebrations of Christmas since birth, even though I didn’t know what it meant for the first few years.

Finally, Communion is a form of worship, and we encourage children to worship God in various ways, not limited to singing, from a very young age. We praise God for what he has done when we partake in the bread and wine (or grape juice). Children can, and do, praise and thank God for what he has done, and Communion is a great way to do this as a church family, together.

Communion isn’t an age-restricted ritual. It’s a family and community celebration, and a form of worship. Let’s invite our children to join us as we partake in it.

Throughout the film, Alice is convinced that she is in a dream (as she does in the book) because everything that is going on around her is completely bizarre and impossible. Hence, she struggles to come to terms with her destined quest.

A couple of quotes stood out here that really made me think. “It’s only impossible if you say it is,” says the Mad Hatter at one point, as Alice rants about her quest. And, my favourite, from Alice, “My father always said that he liked to think up six impossible things to do before breakfast”. Alice’s father, and later Alice, was not limited by rationality and straight-forwardness. He was a dreamer, and lived to see his impossible dreams come true. Alice recalls this and realizes that she CAN complete her quest and defeat the Jaberwocky, even though it is a seemingly impossible task.

So, my question to you is, what impossible, bizarre ideas have you dreamed up that defy rationality, and have you pushed them aside because of that? Be like Alice and her father, a dreamer, and put to work your impossible schemes and plans that look like they’ll never work! It’s only impossible if you say so. It is unlikely that you will  think up six impossible things to do before breakfast, every day, but don’t be limited by rationality and common sense when you do think up impossible things.

Remember: ‘I can do everything through him who gives me strength.’ (Philippians 4:13, NIV)

Wow. Harsh words, indeed, from Jesus. Yet there is an important message in Jesus’ teaching that cannot be missed. No, he wasn’t suggesting suicide…

As leaders in Children’s Ministry, parents, and adults in general, we have a resounding influence in the lives of kids that we care for. Children, new to the world and still trying to understand it, turn to older people, those who have had plenty of experience in life, for guidance. As the anti-smoking ads say, children will copy what YOU do.

Also, children look up to you! They want to be like you! They may never say it, but it is true. Never underestimate the impact that you have on a child’s life. They may not be Big Brother, but they are always watching you, copying you, learning from you.

So, the spiritual well-being of a child is the responsibility of his parents and other adults that guide him through life; it is up to us to teach him, through our actions as well as our words, to live a Godly life, instead of the opposite. To quote my friend’s study bible, ‘When you cause a child to sin, you darken two lives.’

Even small things that you do in front of kids will have a large impact in their lives. So make sure that you sow good things into their lives through even the little actions that you do, because you will reap what you sow. Who knows, maybe one of those little, insignificant actions will have a strong, lasting, positive impact in that kid’s life for years to come!

Recently, I asked one of my non-Christian friends how he would define faith. I was a little surprised at first by his answer, but gradually realized that how he saw faith was a pretty common perception amongst Christians and non-Christians alike.

His response was: “You can have faith in someone, which is similar to trusting them, except it’s like…not just about knowledge but in their actions too. It’s like saying you know something to be true that can’t be proven to be true. Or at least you feel that you know it…It’s believing something to be true about another’s potential actions without any universal justification.”

As Christians, our usual response to this question of the definition of faith would be to fall back on the much-quoted Hebrews 11:1 ‘Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.’ These two responses would suggest, from the exterior, that faith, specifically the Christian faith, is trusting in someone blindly, believing completely that they will be true to their word when you have no guarantee that they will live up to it. Sort of like giving your car keys to a random person walking past and trusting that they will return them to you eventually.

This is blind faith, and it is not a realistic portrayal of the Christian faith. I do not put my trust in a God that has no record of trustworthiness, nor do I believe in a God that I have no evidence for. My faith does not exist because someone once told me about God and I believed in him on the spot. Nor does it exist simply because my parents are Christians. I put my faith in a God that I know I can trust, because He has proven himself, time and time again.

Now, I am not disproving Hebrews 11:1. What the verse says is true, but it must be approached from the right angle. I trust that God will do certain things, even though I can’t see them happening. That is the Hebrews 11:1 part of faith. I believe without having seen. However, my faith is not blind in the trusting sense, as I know that the One that I put my faith in is faithful.

Faith is that spot that sits in-between blind faith and knowledge. Blind faith is completely unfounded, while knowledge is firmly founded. Faith has no knowledge, but it has well-founded trust.

I once read a good example of faith in a book, but I cannot remember what book it was. I will try to rewrite it as I remember it. A man has been married for thirty years, and his marriage has been a happy, loving, committed one. The couple have never been unfaithful to each other. One day, the man sees his wife in the mall, holding hands with another man. He has faith that his wife is not cheating on him. Although the evidence suggests that she is having an extra-marital relationship, the man knows that his wife is not cheating on him, not because of blind faith, but because she has been committed and faithful to him for thirty years and he knows that he can trust her. He cannot see that she is not cheating on him, but he has a well-founded faith that she is not.

‘Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.’ Yes, we have faith that the unseen will happen, a faith that is firmly based in a faithful God. So, what will your response be, if tomorrow, someone asks you what faith means?