He came into my classroom like a watermelon seed: sweet, but when you tried to contain him he would squirt away. It was a little after the beginning of the school year when he joined our school. Most of the curriculum he accomplished easily; however our Bible class was geared mostly for standard Seventh-day Adventist students. He was neither standard nor Adventist.
We have a tradition in our classroom to have a “class pastor” every day who says morning, lunch and dismissal prayers, and gets to be line leader all day. It’s an honor to be the pastor on your day. Of the seven students in our room, four had never prayed or had any idea what it meant. He was one of these. To change this I start out praying for them and then after a time we did echo prayers where I prayed a phrase and they echoed it. Then it progressed to them starting the prayer and me filling in any gaps, and so on. I thought he was doing well.
Then one day not too long after he arrived, we were talking about Jesus’ soon return when I said, “Won’t we be glad when Jesus comes?” Then he blurted out, “I don’t know Jesus, but my dad is coming to visit this weekend and that’s cool!”
I decided to make a shift in Bible class plans.
We started at the very beginning of who God is, what He has done for us, and how very much He loves us—all with lots of stories and projects. Soon he, and all the others, learned to pray and were so happy to be learning about “our best friend Jesus” and His love for us.
Sad to say, tough times came into this little man’s life. The family was going through some changes, yet he always came to school cheerful and eager to learn, especially about his new friend Jesus. He began saying prayers that made my eyes water and he would boldly stand up proclaiming to all his love for Jesus.
And so we ask for your continued prayers for our church schools as we all go on learning about Jesus.
