You never know what gift will grab children on Christmas morning. For the first time in 14 years we had two young children (our youngest two granddaughters) with us for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The excitement was evident from the moment they arrived. It was hard for them to contain it in their 3-and-6-year-old bodies. The girls got lots of gifts, but when the opening was done and it was time to get down to playing, they chose the small containers of Kinetic Sand I’d picked up for under $3 each, and hid in their stockings. I had no idea what it was, but noted it was non-toxic, age-appropriate, and came in Seashell plastic containers that were in the girl’s their favorite colors.
Since it said “sand” I thought it might be a good idea to play with it in the basement. We headed downstairs, and 45 minutes later they were still having fun with it, molding it in various plastic beach toys, slicing the molds into pieces with little plastic play knives, and having a grand old time. They decided it needed to go into the “oven” and placed the molds in an old cooler. They had a blast, with the least expensive gift I bought on a whim for a stocking stuffer. If I’d been forced to guess what they would choose to play with first, I would not have guessed Kinetic Sand. Go figure. Nana can be clueless.
2 Corinthians 4:7 speaks of a precious Message that we carry around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary live (The Message Bible). No one expected the Messiah to be housed in such a vessel! Jesus very ordinariness was one of the stumbling blocks to belief.
It seems that it has taken a pandemic to slow us down enough to begin to pay attention to the simple, ordinary things we’ve taken for granted – like unadorned clay pots. In my case, the simple blessing was in the hands to two little girls who loved taking time “without an awareness of time” with me and Kinetic Sand.
Anne
During this season of COVID 19, St. Paul’s UCC Woodstock, VA
offers these meditations as a service to the community.
Wayfinding 