2009-Jun-10 - Importance of Little...
Summer is here and boy things are heating up! While our weather in OH is nice and cool yet, the sun is beginning to warm us up nicely and people are outside more and more. I am bike riding now, and I get to see my neighbors often in the evening as they are either on their porches or working their gardens. Flowers and veggie patches are huge here~it's a farming community really. There are loads of fields all around our small little town.
With summer comes all sorts of activities that folks do. I have mentioned the gardening, but there are all kinds of recreations that when winter winds are blustering are impossible that kids and adults alike get into this time of year. Baseball, soccer, swimming, basketball, bike riding and group activities that incorporate the outdoors can be found in the lives of many. Our church is planning its annual vacation Bible school week, and it's a time that adults and kids both enjoy. Would you believe that at our first planning meeting a mom brought two girls because she thought we were IN Bible school this week? Someone has spread the word, it's true, and there were two little girls ready and wanting Bible school.
I was excited to see those girls come in with their mom~there's some kids waiting on Bible school already~ Whoo hoo! I can't wait until our week. Bible school holds special meaning for us. It was when my husband accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior at a young age.
He tells this story sometimes in church to illustrate that we need to be looking to meet the needs of those who don't know Jesus by being willing to share the Lord with them. My husband was one such person who was a child not being raised in church was invited by cousins to their vbs while he was visiting them from several states away. His parents were not church attenders, so he had never been to vbs, much less heard that Jesus loves him and died for his sins.
Sometimes he recalls his memory of that encounter where he had overheard the teachers talking who were disappointed with not having a larger crowd of kids. At the time, he didn't understand as a boy of seven, but even today, since growing up knowing that he was saved because of the teaching he received, that he still does not understand how the lack of children somehow made the week less than successful.
His preaching (he's pastor now) reflects that God's grace is for even one~because he knows that he is THAT one that was saved at the vbs where workers thought it was unsuccessful. Wonder if the place had been loaded with kids would my husband have heard the gospel call or been distracted by the activity of many friends? Would the outcome have been different if the teachers had had the success they thought had eluded them?
Oh don't get me wrong, but this Sister loves loads of kids, and the more the merrier, but I know God brings who He wants to attend such events. I am guessing, and my hubby believes it was God who put him at the right place at the right time for a life changing encounter with the Lord...despite the down trodden teachers!
I want to encourage you who are training your children, the church's children or community Bible school children to see the fields of harvest as ready for the picking because the Lord can and does work as He sees fit. Sometimes what looks to humans like failure is exactly the divine plan of our Lord.
There is a great importance of little, for little is much when God is in it! And that little vbs was important in the life of one child. . .who is one grown man. . .who today knows His Lord!
Remember that if it's just ONE child or student that Jesus loves them as much as He loves a whole room full. I have taught hundreds (yes, literally), and I've taught one. The result and impact may not be the same, but the importance is~
As we all prepare for our summer activities where our Lord's work or whatever our work, remembering that there is an importance of little!
blessings and God's will in your efforts,
SisterTipster
