As I pause to reflect on this past year, on a job I never thought I would be doing, I am amazed at what God has taught me through the process. Here I am working at teaching these children basic Bible truths and I find that I need to learn them too!
In working with the preschool aged kids this year, we have been going through a curriculum that goes through the majority of the Bible - highlighting stories and characters. While I hope the kids are beginning to gain a Biblical foundation this year, I realize how much I have learned that I didn't know about the Bible! There are two stories that are frequently repeated throughout children's curriculums; two that I was unfamiliar with before: The story of Hannah (1 Samuel 1) and the story of Naaman's servant girl(2 Kings 5).
Hannah was a woman whose life is recorded in the Bible. She desperately wanted to have a child. She was crying out to God in the temple one day when a priest came over to her and gave her his blessing. She went home and conceived a son! The principle often used from this story to teach children is : God hears us when we pray. That has been such a lesson for me this year! In all the uncertainty of planting a church, with so many obstacles and ways where I feel inadequate, I have thought back to Hannah and the lesson that God hears us when we pray. He grants us the desire of our hearts. Even while I sometimes feel like Hannah - crying out to God for the same things time and again - at the end of the day I rest assured that my God hears me and is quick to act on my behalf.
Secondly, I have learned a lesson from the story of Naaman's servant girl. Naaman was a mighty soldier who had victory in every battle except a personal one with leprosy. A little slave girl in his house told him he should go to the prophet Elisha, and he would heal him. Sure enough, Naaman went to Elisha and, after following his instructions, Naaman was healed. The part that has stood out to me is that the hero in this story is the little slave girl! Who knows what her life has been like in Naaman's house; whether she was treated kindly or not? She had been taken captive out of Israel when she was just a little girl. It seems that her childlike faith was still alive and well even when she was in captivity. While she could have blamed the God she served for what had happened to her, she chose to live a life of faith. How was this little one raised? What lessons did her parents teach her before she went into captivity? She must have had a solid family of faith that produced one so strong yet so small! I believe that God is going to do something mighty in the lives of the children at our church. I believe that they will not one day grow up to be assets in God's kingdom - they already are! They can take things by faith and apply them now to see God's kingdom released on earth. I believe that wherever they go in life from here, God will use them, like He did Naaman's unnamed servant girl, to change the lives of those around them.
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