It is the first day of Super Summer and all the kids are filled with excitement and curiosity of what this summer will hold. If you have not experienced Super Summer it is hard to put into words. Trying to explain what it is, how it works and how to explain the sheer fullness the four hours hold. However, despite the beautiful chaos, I will do my best to explain.
Super Summer is a kids camp all summer long held at The Root Cellar. The Root Cellar is EM Lewiston’s community partner and is rooted in being a safe space for the neighborhood to cultivate social, economic and spiritual wholeness as part of God’s Kingdom through relationships and many different programs throughout the year.
One of the programs is Super Summer which is filled with field trips to nature hikes or the beach. The kids choose an elective to participate in all summer which includes sewing, basketball, science, and dance. There are art projects, enrichment classes and my favorite (I am biased because this is what I do all day long) is Kids Club. Each day the kids rotate 2 or 3 times to different activities. However, the one place the kids go to every day is Kids Club. Each week the team coming in has an essential responsibility of leading and taking part in Kids Club. Kids Club is such a foundational part of the day because we get to participate in growing and learning together about who God is and the story of The Gospel.
This summer we get to share this by working alongside what God is already doing through The Root Cellar and Super Summer. This summer we are teaching Imago Dei or made in the image of God and going through all the characteristics of who God is.
The first day of Kids Club we focused on Imago Dei. Imago Dei is Latin for made in the image of God. After going through the lesson and game the kids created paper plate masks of themselves and wrote all the different types of qualities that God shares with each person.
Being a part of this brought me so much joy. The kids used markers, yarn, and many other types of crafts to create self-portraits of themselves and then wrote the qualities that make them Imago Dei. Not all the masks were the same, they were all created uniquely by individual people.
In the creation account in Genesis, it says “So God created man in His own image, in the image and likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Genesis 1:27
We were created in the image and likeness of God. In Desiring God, John Piper writes, “God loves to behold His glory reflected in His works. So the eternal happiness of the triune God spilled over in the work of creation and redemption. And since this original happiness was God’s delight in His own glory, therefore the happiness that He has in all His works of creation and redemption is nothing other than a delight in His own glory.”
The Lord delights in His creation. We are His works of creation.
Watching the kids create their masks in their own image gave me a small glimpse of how God created us. We are not all the same. We all have different qualities and attributes that reflect The Lord’s character. I think one of the reasons I love the beauty of Imago Dei is that it encompasses differences as beautiful and not a barrier.
Lewiston from the outside looking in encompasses many differences. The children at The Root Cellar come from a variety of different families. The teams coming each week share different stories of upbringing and life.
Despite all the things that could separate us, one thing remains constant.
Imago Dei.
Sam Storms describes Imago Dei seamlessly as, “the image of God in man as functional holism means that God made human beings, both male and female, to be created and finite representations (images of God) of God’s own nature, that in relationship with him and each other, they might be his representatives (imaging God) in carrying out the responsibilities he has given to them. In this sense, we are images of God in order to image God and his purposes in the ordering of our lives and carrying out of our God-given responsibilities.”
The Lord is showing me His image in so many different ways this summer and the beauty and joy of His image through the eyes of a child.
——
Learn More about Lewiston, Maine Mission Trips
More Mission Stories
Site developed and hosted by Skycog, Inc.