I have shared this as a devotional talk to groups of teachers a few times and add it here as a postscript to the JOANIE series of posts.
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You may recall that despite our dislike of the youth rally speaker – well, not him personally, but his suggestion that we give serious thought to something that we didn’t really care to think about – something was ringing true for me.
In truth, the youth rally was not my first exposure to the gospel. My mother worked as a secretary at the Salvation Army for a few years when I was growing up, and my younger sister and I attended its 2-week Vacation Bible School a few summers in a row.
We loved it! From start to finish – the songs, the lessons, the games, the crafts, the SNACKS! – we loved it all!
I won several awards for Bible verse memorization. They made me get up at the closing program each year and recite all ten verses. Mortifying! I mention this to make my point that I was totally into VBS.
BUT, every single day of VBS, every single day of every single year that we went….at the end of every single lesson, an invitation was issued, the same invitation given at Youth Rally.
And every single time I sat there quietly, head bowed, hands folded in lap. It never, for a single moment, occurred to me that the teacher was talking to me.
I strongly suspect that THIS is the reason the youth rally speaker’s words rang true for me. I’d heard it before – 5 or 6 years earlier – and even if it had slipped from memory, it was planted there, the truth.
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I wonder at times about my childhood teacher. Did she question her abilities because of not seeing an immediate response? I hope not. She planted a lot of seeds! And the way she was among us, caring and gentle, made an impression. I think that impression tamped down the scatterings that had fallen on me.
“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” – Galatians 6:9
