Teaching kids divine love: moving beyond chocolates and teddy bears

This article discusses teaching children about divine love, moving beyond the fleeting joys of Valentine's gifts to embrace Christ's compassion. It highlights the importance of modeling empathy and connection in a world fraught with inequity.

The Rev. Kirsten King

The Rev. Kirsten KingPhoto provided

A Prayer for St. Valentine’s Day*

Kirsten King, Pastor

First Presbyterian Church of Kennett

I recently found myself in several conversations about how we teach our children about God’s love.

We want them to know a love that goes beyond the short-lived joy and comfort of boxes of chocolate, candy hearts, and teddy bears.

We want them to know the compassionate nature of Christ and a sense of real divine love, a love that will not let them go and a love that will move them with compassion toward others.

Author Kayla Craig writes, “Compassion keeps us tender to our own humanity and the humanity of our neighbor."

"Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin,” writes Frederick Buechner. "It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too."

Our world is breaking under the weight of inequity and oppression.

What if we embraced this mutuality, this way God has formed us for connection?

I think our world would be full of more empathetic, compassionate people.

As Christians, we’re not just welcomed into compassion.

We’re called to it.

Every day we’re given opportunities to move toward others in love or to retreat into our selfish desires ... To raise compassionate kids who become compassionate adults, we ourselves must live out Jesus’ command to care for others as we wish to be cared for.

Our children are watching what we say and how we say it.

They absorb how we interact with an unpleasant neighbor.

They hear how we talk to our spouse.

They watch how we react to the news, spend our money and time, and treat those around us.

Because of God’s love, we can soften the shards of our hearts and reflect the loving kindness of God in our parenting and our neighboring.

We can raise children who pay attention to their emotions so they can tend to the hearts of others.

We can be families that live with compassion, keeping our hearts tender and free from the world’s hierarchies.

It sounds audacious, and maybe a little naïve.

But this is no sappy valentine: with God’s help, we can be families who embody compassion, move toward others, and change the world in love.

Help us to love bravely and to model what it is to keep choosing love, even when it is not easy.

Especially then.

May our children know the gift of loving another and being loved fully in return.