Pentecost for Kids

In Deuteronomy 16, God commanded His people to keep the feast of Pentecost like this: “You shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and female servant, the Levite who is within your gates, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are among you…” (Dt. 16:11). Pentecost was a God ordained party. And there are many potential guests, beginning with those closest to you and working your way out. We certainly should not miss the strangers, the orphans, and the widows. And Levites were the Old Covenant pastors – don’t forget to invite your pastor to your parties! But the list starts with kids. The first people invited to your Pentecost party are supposed to be your son and your daughter. And this is a principle for life in general. You can either think of your children first or you can remember them later. This doesn’t mean that every event, every moment of your life revolves around your children. An important part of training children is teaching them that the world does not revolve around them. Sometimes they must be quiet. Sometimes they must sit still. Sometimes they must drop what they are doing and run to obey instructions. But we teach this by thinking about them first, by thinking about how you can plan to rejoice with your children in every situation. How will they be tempted when you go into the grocery store? What will it be like when you have friends over for dinner? How may they respond to lots of attention on their birthday? What will it be like on vacation? God commands us to rejoice with our children, and this means that we must think ahead, plan ahead so that the various situations we face will be moments of joy and not frustration. We must seek to prepare our children for different occasions, and we must prepare our occasions for our children. Children are strangers in this world. They just got here a few years ago or a few months ago. They are to be welcomed, to be taught, to be loved and corrected. When we do this, God blesses families with Pentecostal joy – a joy which is, by the power of the Spirit, worth sharing with everybody around us.