What do you know?

Now every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. (Luke 2: 41-47)

I am the parent of two grown children. My son just turned 20, and this year, my daughter will graduate from high school. As we look back on our parenting years, we hope that we did a good enough job raising these young people to be responsible, productive adults. There are so many things they need to know as they venture out into the world, and there are so many times when we’ve felt unprepared or simply unable to teach them about everything that will come their way. I hope as their parents, we recognized, as we tried to guide them through childhood, that our children have their own wisdom, their own way of looking at things that may be different from the way we see things, maybe even that they have something to teach us!

This week, an article called “Learning from Children,” in the May 2010 issue of Lutheran Woman Today, affirmed my hopes. According to the author, Herbert Anderson, “The story of Jesus in the temple reminds us that we cannot know the fullness of being human without listening to children and understanding what they see.” Anderson suggests that when our primary, our only focus as parents is teaching, nurturing and protecting our children, we miss the opportunity to learn from them. They have stuff to teach us!

Anderson observes, “The biblical story parallels the human story of childhood, adulthood, and parental care of children. Because of Jesus, childness is not foreign to God. The picture of Jesus welcoming children is a radically new and more inclusive vision of the human community. Adults are invited to learn from children about being human and about being a disciple of Jesus.”

I invite you, with the children who are around you, to be intentional about how you listen to them. You might be amazed!