Fairhaven and Kirkham Youth Groups at 3 Generate 2024

 

Reflection

Mark 10: 15-16 says this:

15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

I was recently advised by a member of our youth group at 3 Generate that doing a jigsaw would help me become more mindful, so I bought one from a local charity shop. I began, by putting all the bits the right way up and collecting edges to one side and finding the corners. I  then realised how we build up pictures from small fragments of information to create the pictures of what we believe, in particular about God. Talking in depth about God over the entire 3 Generate weekend enabled me to see that as our faith develops the pictures become more complex more like a 1000-piece jigsaw than a child’s one. But, if we are not given new information or perhaps more importantly if we don’t question what we know, we can end up feeling quite apart from God because we fail to build the pieces into a coherent picture. Like doing a jigsaw with the wrong picture to follow perhaps. As children we have a simplistic idea of God and as we get older, we have questions about the things we see and experience.

The circuits young people attending 3 Generate had some amazing and complex questions which challenged me and made me really think. I felt so proud of them attending some of the group discussions and putting forward both questions and answers, they talked of God being omnipresent and omnificent, words many adults would struggle with. It was a kairos moment for many when they realised that we are all made in the image of God and therefore we all see God differently and that this was a good thing. We were able to challenge the idea that God is judgemental and punishes us to see God as a loving and caring entity, that is not judgemental. Perhaps when Jesus challenges us in Mark 10 to come to God as children it means we are to come asking questions and repeatedly reconnecting pieces to form a new picture of what God means. We are to come to God in a childlike way rather than our often-childlike way of assuming our picture is the right picture and our way is always the right way.

The 3 Generate weekend was amazing in so many ways and now all I need to do is make time to do the new jigsaw I have.

Rev Michaela Barker