We have so much to celebrate!  We have seventeen children who have been participating in our Sunday School.  Ask around the Upper Valley and you will find that we are extraordinarily blessed!

Recently I heard from a woman who has moved to a distant city.  On Easter she went to try out a UCC church.  She said she sat down in the pew, took one look at the bulletin and started to cry because she felt so at home.  She said that even though the service was different, she knew the basics–she called it a kind of church literacy.

We are giving these seventeen children a gift for the rest of their lives.  Anytime they are far away, anytime they feel lost or are having a hard time, they can walk into any church like ours around the world and feel at home and know the basics of how to pray and sing and connect with that community.

And in the meantime, as we teach them what we know about church and the spiritual and moral realms, they are filling us with their energy and joy and all the wisdom that they teach us.  They are deepening our love.  They are giving us hope.

We will celebrate with a special litany of scriptures and song with the children as readers and the Diverse Musical Traditions Team leading the congregation in singing the refrain of “Every Time I Feel the Spirit.” We will also reflect on a passage from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:5-13) about one of the children’s favorite subjects.  We will sing “In the Bulb There Is a Flower” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”  John Atwood has planned some special child-friendly organ pieces:  “The Swan” by Camille Saint-Saëns; three pieces for the musical clock by Joseph Haydn (1. Allegro moderato, 2. Menuett “The Call of the Quail,” and 3. Vivace “Eight o-clock”), and March from The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky.