As we shared our children’s songs today, we came to a lot of interesting ideas. I think one of the biggest ideas that we touched on was that in the telling of Biblical stories, especially within children’s music, elements of the stories are often purposefully left out. A story in which this commonly takes place is Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. In children’s music, the only part of this story that is told is Joshua’s journey to break down the walls of Jericho, but it generally leaves out the part of the stories in which Joshua and the soldiers destroy Jericho and everything within. One of my classmates even talked about how this omittance of parts of a story can be misleading.
Something else I found interesting was that songs that we see simply as children’s songs often have a much larger history behind them. For example, “This Little Light of Mine” gained its popularity in the Civil Rights Movement. It became somewhat of an anthem for justice and equality.
Children’s songs often collaborate multiple Bible verses to communicate one main Biblical idea. For instance, “This Little Light of Mine” uses verses from Ephesians, John, Luke, and Matthew. This is intended to portray big ideas of the Bible in a way that children can easily understand. Now as we are all grown we can look back at these songs that influenced our childhood and make greater Biblical connections and learn even more.