God's ABCs

While our own kids were out of town at a family reunion with my parents this weekend, Mike and I were called upon to teach in the preschool area at church on Sunday morning. And when I say that, I mean we were called on Sunday morning.

I originally thought we would be with the 4 year old Pre-K kids which are my son's age. But when we got there, it turned into the director saying, "Well, I've placed you in the 2's class. Most of them have already turned 3."

I don't do well with little preparation and I do even worse when what I have mentally prepared myself for changes.

What makes this whole thing even funnier to me is that when I asked the director what the lesson was for the day, she brought me a single sheet that had the text of a Bible story from Genesis and a single picture to color on the back. This is what I had to go on. Then, not until I was sitting down to try to give the children a Bible story did I find that the sheet I was originally given was completely different from the sheets we were given for the children.

I was just about fit to be tied.

But we pressed on. I was going to teach on the story in Matthew 8 where Jesus was asleep on the boat in the midst of a storm and the disciples woke him and he calmed the storm.

We had somewhat corralled the children to one side of the room and kind of had a circle time going. Several of the children sat right down to listen, but a few continued to wander the room playing with toys like they had no idea what "circle time" was. We tried to reign them back in a little bit, but eventually just moved on and prayed that they would hear the story while they played.

Then the sweetest thing happened.

I have learned a few things from all the volunteering I have done in the preschool program at BSF so I implemented some of those things here. I pulled out my Bible and before we talked about the Bible story, I began talking to the children about the Bible itself.

I asked, "Do you know what book this is?"

One child may have said, "The Bible."

"Yes, it's the Bible. Do you want to see? Do you want to touch it?" I opened it up and had my finger on our story in Matthew and encouraged them to put their fingers on it. And then I asked, "Do you know what the Bible is?"

Then one precious little girl piped up with, "Hey, there are ABCs in there."

"Yes, there are. Do you know who's ABCs these are?"

"They're God's ABCs!" she replied quite excitedly.

"Yes, that's absolutely right. These are God's ABCs. His true and holy Word."

No pastor could preach that sermon any better than a 3 year old saying, "They're God's ABCs."

Amen.