Ballerinas & Skateboarding Angels

My night was filled with a skateboard totting, “dude” saying angel, a boy healed of Leukemia, 70 ballerinas, 6th grade girls banging on tin siding, and a partridge in a pear tree. Bethel Christian School held their annual Christmas concert and I was blown away as I watched dozens of pirouetting ballerinas and 5-year-old girls in sparkling tutus spring up like flowers in a 7-part rendition of the parable of the talents. Girls, wearing every shade of pink imaginable, leapt, ran, and sparkled across the stage, each with their own unique costume. The bulletin I got at the door told me that the little dance studio had grown from 40, 1st – 8th grade dancers to 70 in a year. The blurb from their instructor read, “Some have danced for years and others are still figuring out their right foot from their left. I don’t need to require perfection from my dancers but I need to instill a belief in them that they can do the impossible.”

Middle schoolers pounded on metal siding, barrels, and all kinds of found objects for a “stomp” piece where they declared, “We are the generation to heal the brokenhearted!” The final drama told the Christmas story, with the help of the angelic host of Christmas past present and future, and held such great lines as, “Mary was sooo pregnant, they had to take a plane, a train, and 2 busses just to get around her.” Besides incorporating the song “Celebrate good times, come on!,” the story linked the birth of Jesus to people being saved and healed today from asthma, broken bones, arthritis, and Leukemia. Add in several hundred homemade cookies and that, my friends, is my kind of kids Christmas concert :>)