Curious George, It Wasn't

Sarah took part in Daniel's preschool's "mystery reader" program yesterday, where she was given the opportunity to surprise Daniel at preschool and be a guest reader to the class, reading one of Daniel's favorite stories at her choosing. So we had this exchange over dinner last night:

"Cool, sounds like fun. What did you read?" I asked.

"I read a Bible story from Daniel's children's Bible," she said.

"Which story?" I asked.

"Oh, the crucifixion."

I had to pause for a second to determine if she was kidding. She wasn't. Daniel's preschool is affiliated with the local Episcopal church, and to their credit and my happiness, they actually don't run away from their faith affiliation. They hold a chapel service for the kids, and reading a Bible story was thankfully not met with a teacher pressing the panic button paging the ACLU. But I have to say that my wife's choice of the crucifixion was a little surprising, despite the fact that, as she pointed out to me, it's one of Daniel's favorite passages.

The account of the crucifixion in Daniel's children's Bible pulls no punches either. For those of you who are big believers in the fourth chapter of theologian J. I. Packer's book "Knowing God" where he speaks strongly against depictions of Jesus, you may object at the illustrations of Jesus being sentenced to death by angry men, forced to carry a cross beaten and battered, and his death on the cross (the illustration only shows his legs and a weeping Mary at he foot of the cross), but the concept of judgment, physical beating and death are all there for the kids to see. I asked Sarah what the kids' reactions were when she read it and showed them the pictures, and she thought they seemed okay.

Just to be clear, Sarah did read the resurrection account as well, so the happy ending was told and redemption and the Christ's victory over death was hopefully what the kids came away with. All in all I think she made a good choice. I probably would've picked something lame like "Left Behind: The Kids". Nothing like a little post-rapture tribulation to spice up a kid's life.