It's almost like a holiday, VBS is. Decorating, preparing, planning out schedules, buying gifts...And that's just in preparation for the event. Once VBS kicks off, there's a whole other level added. Coralling three sets of age groups to each station, ensuring that everyone stays together. Making sure that every creative snack meets certain dietary needs. Comforting the youngest group who is ready to go home and go to bed thirty minutes before each night's ending, thus resulting in many a tearful eye that must be comforted. Even so, the dedicated volunteers return year after year because a church that has a flourishing children's department holds the keys to the future, and each child, whether he or she comes from a family within the church, is cherished. Whitney Houston was right all along: "I believe the children are our future." We must teach them well, and let them lead the way. Well, sometimes.
An outwardly faced church doesn't exist to serve only its members, but rather all who we come into contact with. I know of so many different local churches in Conway who truly serve as Jesus did, and that is in a way that sees no boundaries when it comes to showing compassion and love to strangers. Even if we don't look the same. Or dress the same. Or live in the same part of town. The church does not exist to create a wall of division between Jesus and those who we claim we are called to love, rather serve as a bridge to close the gap between the believers and those who find themselves on the fringe. Maybe they have faced judgement elsewhere. Maybe they feel like they would never be accepted because of what the paper trail of their life looks like on record. Whatever the reason, all should be welcome at this table.
Tonight I witnessed a beautiful sight, and I hope my friend won't mind me sharing this. I am not going to tag her on here, but hopefully she will have a chance to read this and know just how much I was moved tonight by her heart. Like many of the children that we see grace our corridors during the VBS rush, there are always some that we don't know who they are. Maybe they received our flyer at a food pantry, or a doctor's office, or a friend of a friend told them about it. Whatever the reason, we embrace them at the front door. And sometimes, we realize that the safest place that they have set foot in might be our church lobby. That the only meal they might have tasted came in the form of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that one of our VBS kitchen volunteers made them when they cried because they were hungry; or received medical care for the dozens of flea bites that covered their body; or for the simple conversation that was had when they just couldn't quite understand how to play a game. These are the moments that we, the volunteers live for.
And at the end of the night, when that one child looks up and declares what they have heard all night, how Jesus is their rescuer, too, we have done our job.
Father, take this seed. You know these kids because they already belong to you. I ask that all of the planning, all of the memorization, all of the crafts, all of the creative snacks that have been prepared for them pale in comparison to what you will do with each of their lives. And God, help us to love well. Help us to extend grace because of the grace that you extended. Help us to have patience for the many other sidewalk conversations that may come. I just ask that you would go before us and allow us to be used as vessels for the mighty work you are going to do in them. Amen.
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