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Priceless expressions from children’s faces

His expression was priceless.

On Sundays at church, there’s a children’s chat given with a message that typically runs parallel to the sermon theme itself.

It’s a little people’s sermon, brief and to the point.

The preacher invites the kids to come forward and gather around, and the response is this adorable parade of little people you just want to pick up and squeeze, because they’re all so incredibly cute. I’ve been half tempted to go up there myself, especially since they’re all treated to some candy at the end before they return to their families in the pews.

Last week the subject was change and how it’s so comfortable and easy for all of us to cling to the old ways, to the school of thought that, hey, we’ve always done something a certain way. We’ve never done it like that before!

Change is some scary stuff.

The pastor used the evolution of the telephone as an illustration that change isn’t always such a bad thing.

She started out showing her little people’s audience a cup and string phone, asking them if they knew what it was.

Frowns and head-shaking in the negative.

They had no idea — at all.

A cup and string phone, two cups connected by a string? Huhh? What’s that all about??

So the preacher demonstrated how it worked, with this one little boy instructed to hold one cup to his ear and listen to someone else talking into the other cup.

The look on his face!! You can’t manufacture that or make that stuff up.

When he realized he could actually hear something this way it was so funny. He was genuinely amazed yet incredulous.

And that expression stayed on his face throughout the rest of the children’s chat. You could see the brain wheels in motion as he tried to figure out how this could be. He was inspecting the phone and giving this great thought as the preacher went on to explain, for example, how princess phones were once the rage, but like any landline phone, you could only go as far as the phone cord would allow.

Now of course, with cell phones, it’s a different story, a whole different communication situation.

I got a real kick out of that little boy’s reaction to the children’s chat message and so did others in the congregation.

There’s just something so special about witnessing a child experience or understand a new concept for the first time.

I remember when my nieces were little, and we were trying to explain to them that their mother and I were actually sisters and that their grandmother was my mother and their mother’s mother.

Frowns and head-shaking in the negative. Huhh?

What amusing looks on their faces! The weight of that knowledge did ultimately sink in. And they’ve been processing this revelation ever since, that we’re all hanging from branches on the same tree.

It’s still cause even today for a priceless expression or two.

(Kiaski, a resident of Richmond, is a staff columnist and community editor for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times. She can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)

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