God Can Be a Bit Silly Too

As an adult, being told to play feels more like a chore than relief on most days. We have responsibilities, and playing seems frivolous and even undignified.

We spend a lot of time watching our children play: with friends, on sports teams, in theater productions, etc. But when it comes to playing with our children, many of us feel intimidated by the idea. We may feel like we don’t have time or don’t even know how to begin.

But sometimes, God breaks through our barriers of taking ourselves so seriously and shines a glimmer of hope.

This past week was spring break for my kids. When a friend was coming over to hang out with my twelve-year-old, my eight-year-old was feeling sad that she didn’t have a friend coming over too. After a few attempts to schedule something, I finally said, “Well, I’ll play with you …” She looked at me incredulously and said, “No offense, Mom, but I don’t want to play with you. I want to play with a friend!” I understood her desire to play with someone her own age.

The next day she got her wish. All three of my kids had friends over. Our house was bustling, and everyone was having fun. When all the guests left, I started to make a late lunch. My eight-year-old had started playing “picnic” with her friend before she had to leave, so there were blankets in the middle of the living room. She asked if we could eat lunch on the picnic blankets, and I agreed.

I brought our sandwiches over while the kids took care of the snacks (their specialty), which included cheese puffs (I know, so nutritious!) and Pringles. We ate our picnic lunch, and when we were done, one of the girls started throwing the Pringles lid like a frisbee to the other. Then they started to include me in the game of catch. We counted how many times we could throw it without it hitting the floor. Then we came up with the idea that whatever way we catch it we have to throw it. So if I happened to catch it between my pinky finger and my knee, I had to throw it in that same pose. It got pretty ridiculous.

Soon we got tired of that, and we all just sat on the floor laughing and talking together. My daughter had her feet up on my lap and we were just sitting there relaxing. It was one of those rare moments where we weren’t accomplishing anything, we weren’t feeling pressured by time, and we were unbelievably … content.

These moments are few and far between, it seems, but it made me realize that play really does break down walls and lead to connection. Play is kind of like rest in that it requires trust … trust that the world won’t fall apart if I’m not accomplishing something… and trust that I am safe to be silly. Play comes out of trust, but it also creates and deepens trust between one another and opens up conversation.

As parents, we want to have that kind of connection with our kids, and we also want them to have that kind of connection with God. We want to share our faith and bring them up in a trusting environment, but it’s not always easy to know where to start. The new book from StoryMakers called Play Together! A Family Devotional acknowledges this challenge for parents:

Real talk: When it comes to sharing our faith with our kids or teens, our desire to pass it along is high. But let’s be honest … we may feel the weight is too much to bear, which often blocks us from getting started. It can sometimes feel tricky or awkward to know where to begin.

Whether we play together spontaneously, like our Pringles frisbee game, or you plan a time to play — this could be a game or outing or doing something creative or using these family devotions — play is always unexpected. I used to think if we planned something, it took away the fun and spontaneity. But the truth is, we are all unique people with unique things happening in our lives, and we can never predict what will happen. Like grace, play always comes as a surprise.

Playing opens up connections, and praying reminds us who we are connected to first and foremost. By participating in these two things as a family, we open up those connections with one another and with our creator.

The devotional, PLAY! StoryMakers for Grown-Ups, puts it this way:

Some days life can feel beyond our reach… especially when we are trying to stay connected with our kids. We can feel lost in the cosmos … floating through time and space. This is when it helps to play and pray … Playing can open our eyes and ground us in reality. Praying can tether us back to where we belong.

The family devotions have activities to do as a family, questions to think about, fun facts, Bible verses, and they all end with a written prayer as well as space to add your own family prayers. There are also Family Spark Cards: Play Edition, which gives families an abbreviated version of these same elements. We opened these up after dinner the other night, and although my fifteen-year-old son groaned at first, by the end we were all throwing paper airplanes around the house, on which we wrote our worries and let them fly away to God.

I have to admit that most of the time starting to play with my family feels like a chore. Everyone wants to get back to their own thing, and honestly, life is so heavy that we usually don’t feel like being lighthearted and silly. We want solutions, not recreation. But once we begin to play and pray, walls come down, true connection begins, and grace for our children and grace for ourselves starts pouring in from the most Creative One, who starts it all and redeems it all.