Kids Define Miracles

Lenten Reflections #38

Today I read the story Rechenka’s Eggs by Patricia Polacco to my kindergarten and first grade classes. My own kids grew up reading Polacco’s family-centered stories, all intermingled with lovely cultural lessons. Rechenka’s Eggs tells a story about Easter eggs intricately painted in the Ukrainian/Eastern European style, a Babushka, and a wild goose. Carefully woven throughout is the message of miracles. Miracles that come when you need them the most, but there’s no reason to expect them.

After I read the story, the children’s hands went up immediately, and we went around the circle discussing what a miracle is to these little ones. With this profound, faith-filled insight, it is hard to believe they only have five or six years on our earth.

What is a miracle?

• It is something that makes you really, really happy.
• It is when the Jews crossed the sea and the sea parted.
• It is when you get hit with a bow and arrow by accident, but you don’t get hurt.
• It is something to be happy about.
• It is when something happens and you don’t know who did it.
• It is a thing that did what cannot exist.
• It is when you don’t know what made something happen, and never thought it could.
• A miracle is anytime you don’t even wish for something, it just happens.
• A miracle is when something bad happens, and then something good happens.
• A miracle is when you’re drawing something and you have no art, and then suddenly art appears!
• Miracles are the things you are thankful for
• A miracle is something you are scared to do, then you try it, and it works
• A miracle is something beautiful
• A miracle is when you are wanting to win something so much and then you do
• A miracle is like good luck
• Miracles are impossible for humans to imagine

Who can give me an example of a miracle?

• Happy tears
• It’s like having something that is plain, but then it is perfectly polished
• When the candles lasted for more nights for Hannukah
• There was a boy on the Titanic when it crashed, and only women could be saved, and the boy jumped into the sea and he survived, that’s the miracle.
• We had a treehouse, and it was rebuilt after being destroyed.
• It is Jesus changing the wine and bread
• I don’t know if this will happen, but I think it will…it will be a miracle when I grow up and I am big and strong.
• A miracle is like when Martin Luther King changed white people fighting with brown people
• “Can I do way back then miracles? Then, when Jesus rose, it was a miracle.”
• Going to heaven is kinda like that – a miracle
• When you invite Jesus into your heart and you get to go to Heaven…but heaven isn’t the only place you go when you die, there’s a really hot place, but I forgot the name of it.
• The den full of lions story, when Daniel got out – that’s a miracle
• In snow-white, the queen was about to get shot by an arrow and didn’t get hit, that’s a miracle
• When Jesus died on the cross, and the guys who helped him (disciples) found out he didn’t die
• Last supper when Jesus said one will betray me, and then one did
• When baby Jesus was born
• When I came alive, it was a miracle
• A miracle is something that a human can’t do, but Jesus can
• A miracle is when people who couldn’t walk and then they could
• Or that time when they ran out of wine and Jesus asked some boys to get buckets of water, and he changed it into wine.
• When something bad turns into something amazing
• The time in the Bible when there was no food and one kid had a lunchbox, and Jesus kept it filled with the bread and fish

Who has had a miracle happen to them?

• A miracle is like if you walk out your front door and there is a pile of clovers, and right on top, above all of them, is a four-leaf clover
• I always wanted my lovey, Pinky, to have a rattler inside her, and I woke up one day, and she did.
• It’s a miracle my grandma is turning 90 and she doesn’t need a wheelchair, just a stroller (walker)
• A miracle happened when I thought my pet catfish had died, and then I found out it didn’t
• I almost got hit by a car when I was two, and my aunt pushed me out of the way, and we both survived; that was a miracle.
• It was a miracle when I saw a great white sturgeon, the biggest fish in the world, and then it laid its eggs in front of me
• It was a miracle cause I didn’t know I was going to Great Wolf Lodge, and then we went
• It’s a miracle when something impossible you can’t do and then you can. One time, I didn’t think I could lift a really heavy weight, and then I did.
• If you have a pet dog and you release it, and it comes back
• It was a miracle when I was sick, I didn’t think I’d feel better, and two days after I did.
• Once my aunt couldn’t remember anything, and then she could, that was a miracle
• There was a man in the Bible who thought he was going to die, and then he didn’t die, he had so much faith in God that he was swept up in a cloud. That story makes me laugh every time! Imagine a man being swept up by a cloud!

What I learned:

Miracles surround us every day – the sun rising and setting, stones skipping, hummingbirds stopping by for a sip, addictions squelched, children being born, diseases cured, monarch butterflies migrating, stars shining, waves crashing. All miracles.

One of the blessings of miracles is the faith they provide and the hope they restore. That is what happened; each child in class candidly shared their thoughts and filled my heart with love and hope, and courage to believe in miracles.

Albert Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”