Maybe the best place to begin is with a mystery.

Christians have always said that Jesus is somehow both fully divine and fully human. Not a blend. Not a compromise. Not 50/50. But wholly both, all the time.

And if that’s true of Jesus, then maybe it gives us a way to think about Scripture too.

Because the Bible is like that.

It is deeply human—written in ancient languages, shaped by particular cultures, carrying all the poetry and perspective of its time. You can feel the dust of the earth in it. The ache of real lives. The limitations and beauty of human expression.

And yet, somehow, it is also divine.

Not in the sense that it floats above history, untouched by it—but that God meets us through it. That the Spirit speaks in and through these very human words. That the story does exactly what it’s meant to do: not answer every question, not resolve every tension, but gently, persistently, draw us toward Jesus.

And that matters.

Because if we treat the Bible like an instruction manual, we’ll read it one way. But if we receive it as an invitation—a story that is going somewhere, that is taking us somewhere—then we begin to read differently.

Not just for information.

But for encounter.

If the Bible is going somewhere, then we should probably begin where it’s headed.

And the destination, it turns out, is not a place.

It’s a person.

Now, that doesn’t mean we force Jesus into every verse or flatten the Hebrew Scriptures into something they were never meant to be. But it does mean we recognize that the whole story bends toward him. That somehow, in ways both obvious and surprising, everything finds its centre in Jesus.

So with children, we begin there.

Not with abstract doctrines. Not with heavy categories they’re not ready to carry. But with a person they can come to know.

In the Gospels, Jesus laughs and weeps. He gets tired. He withdraws. He welcomes. He gets frustrated. He heals. He notices people others overlook. He holds children close and tells his friends, this is what the kingdom is like.

And that’s where we start.

Because the goal of knowing the Bible is not mastering the text.

It’s knowing Jesus.

Now, of course, we believe Jesus rescues us from sin. That matters. But young children don’t yet have the categories to hold the full weight of sin and grace the way adults do. And that’s okay.

Because their formation is not ultimately our burden to carry.

The Spirit is already at work.

Our role is to introduce them to the love of God as we see it in Jesus—to create space where they can trust, wonder, and belong. The deeper complexities will come in time.

After all, when Jesus encountered children, he didn’t rush to explain atonement theory.

He blessed them.

He prayed for them.

He welcomed them.

Once children begin to recognize Jesus, something else starts to happen.

They begin to see that the Bible isn’t just a collection of disconnected stories—but one long, unfolding narrative.

A story with movement.

A story with tension.

A story that holds together.

So when we tell the story of David, we don’t need to say, “David is just like Jesus.” He’s not. And that’s kind of the point.

Instead, we let the story be what it is.

And over time, as children become familiar with the patterns—the rise and fall, the rescue and relapse—they begin to notice something. That again and again, God shows up in mercy. That God moves toward people in trouble. That God refuses to abandon the story.

Joseph. Egypt. Slavery. Moses. Freedom.

And slowly, almost quietly, they start to recognize: this feels like the God I met in Jesus.

From there, we begin to widen the frame.

Creation becomes the work of the same generous God we see in Jesus. The prophets become voices calling people back to the same compassion Jesus embodies. The early church becomes a community trying—sometimes beautifully, sometimes messily—to live in his way.

Even Revelation, strange and symbolic as it is, becomes less about fear and more about hope—the promise that God is making all things new.

And in all of it, the thread holds.

Everything circles back to Jesus.

It’s natural to start with “Bible stories.” They’re vivid. Memorable. Full of action.

And that’s not wrong.

But on their own, they can sometimes form a fragmented imagination.

Noah becomes a boat and some animals, without the deeper questions the story is wrestling with. David becomes bravery without complexity. Moses becomes leadership without struggle.

And the risk is subtle but real.

Because the Bible doesn’t actually give us heroes.

It gives us humans.

Messy, inconsistent, sometimes courageous, sometimes deeply broken humans.

All except one.

So if we lean too hard into moral lessons—be brave like David, lead like Moses—we might unintentionally set children up for confusion later, when they discover that these same figures are also flawed and complicated.

But if we tell these stories as stories about God—about God’s faithfulness, God’s patience, God’s refusal to give up on people—then something different happens.

Children are not surprised by the mess.

And they are not undone by it.

Because they’ve already learned where the story is going.

Back to Jesus.

And that’s really the heart of it.

Not perfection.

Not pressure.

But a steady, honest, hopeful invitation.

This is our approach at Commons Kids.

Honest.

Curious.

And always, always…

Jesus at the centre.