The students in our Sunday School love to share, especially if it involves a performance. In following the direction in the Church Manual that “the Sabbath School children shall be taught the Scriptures . . .” (p. 62), last year we read the stories of Nehemiah and Joseph and turned them into plays that we performed for the entire church after the Sunday service.
It was amazing how enriching these simple plays were. The Sunday School students beamed at having done good work, the adults cherished the opportunity to witness the progress that the students had been making, and everyone appreciated having a reason to mingle after church and engage with each other.
So when the idea came to me to have the students write their own hymns, I realized that this, too, could be an occasion for the Sunday School and the church to be mutually blessed.
The Sunday School students would benefit from an increased familiarity with hymns and the opportunity to see how spiritual songs could be relevant to their lives. Just as the stories in the Bible and ideas from Science and Health can guide and support us, hymns can also be a lifeline in challenging moments and a catalyst for healing. How much more powerful, then, would it be for the students to have their very own hymn to lean on as a source of comfort and inspiration the next time they were faced with a challenge? The students would be personalizing the hymns, writing lyrics that were especially meaningful to them.
This was a true Sunday School activity because it encouraged the students to reflect on how to apply Christian Science in their own lives. When one student shared that sometimes he felt lost when he didn’t know the answer to questions in school, we discussed how God, divine Mind, is the source of our intelligence, always available to direct us to a solution.
We spent four weeks creating the hymns, but we could have spent longer. By the end of the month one student had finished her hymn and was able to perform it for the church members. So once again the church was clearly blessed to share and rejoice in the “innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, [and] uncontaminated lives” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 110) that are the hallmark of us all as God’s beloved children.
