Children’s Time:
Trees, stretching our limbs to the sky
Psalm 1
(Editor: Kimberley O'donnell)
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be a tree?
When I was an elementary school student in Korea, my friends and I loved to sing a children’s song, May is Blue. “May is Blue. We are growing. Fly, birds, fly, to the blue sky! Run, streams, run, over the blue field!”
One day in May, I was alone in the school playground, sitting on the dusty ground, drawing something with a stick. Suddenly I wanted to sing May is Blue. So I sang the whole song, then I wondered, what if I could become a tree? Then I thought, “Oh no - birds fly, rivers run, but trees can’t move. I love to move around, I don’t want to be a tree.”
Then I thought, “But trees grow, don’t they? The roots go deeper into the earth. The branches open up to the sky as if they embrace the blue sky in their wide open arms. Trees have roots, a trunk, branches, leaves, just like I have two legs, a body, two arms, and lots of hair!” Then I thought, “Let me give it a try. I will be a tree.”
Would anyone like to stand up and show us how we can be a tree?
Stand with your legs apart, as if they were roots, strongly connected to the earth. Imagine you are planted beside a stream of cool, cool water, and your roots absorb the water and the good things from the earth.
Imagine you take these nourishing things up into your body as if the trunk of the tree is pulling them up like a straw. Then slowly open up your two arms and open your palms up toward the sky as if your arms are your branches, the sky is above your head, and your palms say hello to sky. Your green leaves rustle gently in the breeze of the warm summer wind! I see your trees are happy and healthy.
Okay, lovely summer trees! Let’s sit down again.
I wonder what trees you were …. and how you felt.
It seems obvious that trees don’t move. But they are full of life. They grow. They love to be as they are.
Have you ever hugged a very old and big tree?
Have you ever touched the beautiful skin of an Arbutus tree, and noticed the fresh green smooth bark under the red peeling bark?
Then you may understand what I am going to say; not only do trees grow, they have their own songs, heartbeats, stories.
In today’s Bible song, Psalm 1, God says “You are like trees planted by streams of water. You will yield the fruit in its season, and your leaves do not wither. In all that you do, your life will be beautiful and enriching. You are my own trees which I plant by flowing streams.”
All of you are the trees that God has planted. God has planted you and cared for you as if you were the only tree in the whole world. We grow and learn how to love and be loved, together with all of God’s creation on earth. God’s love makes you grow taller and wider and deeper and stronger.
Will you pray with me? (This is an echo or repeat-after-me prayer.)
Dear God,
thank you for growing us
as your trees.
Let our songs be heard
to the end of the stream,
so that everyone may know
that God loves us all. Amen.
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