A funny thing happens when you tell a class you’ll be gone for a week for VBS.
They all want to tell their VBS stories to you when you return! Smile.
There is a couple I want to tell you about. I’m going to be honest, so hang on.
The first time this couple came to class, I had to ask God to help me not judge.
Here’s why: In a study our small group was doing at the time, she challenged us to think about how much we judge by outside appearances. I started to get prideful in my spirit; I don’t do that! If I see someone poor on the road, my heart bleeds. If I see a girl dressed in a way that should make her father tell her to change, I want to hug her and tell her all the reasons she doesn’t have to do that.
Who me judge?
But there is an area in my heart. Just like there is in everyone’s.
Deep breath.
It’s hard for me to not jump to conclusions about someone’s character when their teeth are bad or when the way they speak comes across as low education or when they don’t smell good (but I think they have the ability to do something about it.)
Yuck and yuck.
Anyway, there’s my background to this story.
I worked with the wife in class quite a bit when they first started coming because she has braces on her feet due to neuropathy. Walking backward was very difficult because she would trip on the braces. We started talking and she was delightful!
The husband was very kind. He works and talks slowly, so I would have to slow my mind down when we would talk, instead of thinking of all the other things I could be doing or people in the class that may need my help then, too.
I really started to like this couple as the weeks went on. They only came on Tuesdays, and I had started thinking of ways to help them better once a week.
They saw me with my boys once and after that would often ask about them. One time the husband gave me a business card of his and told me he would take a photograph of the boys I already had and doctor it up so I could frame it. He made sure I knew he would do this as a gift, not for payment. Break my heart.
Anyway. Today. They asked me how VBS went and the husband started to share his story. He told me how he wasn’t raised in church and didn’t give his life to Jesus until he was 23. After that happened, his pastor asked him if he would sit in on some classes at Bible School that following summer and be a male presence. The pastor told him the ladies would continue to teach the kids, but that the kids would be better behaved if a man was there in the room.
Well, little did my friend know how much he would learn sitting in that room! Having never grown up hearing the stories of the Bible, he soaked them all in. And at a level that his new faith could understand.
What a wise pastor.
His wife came over about this time in our conversation today and her man explained to her what he was telling me about. She said she had been raised in church and gone down to the front when she was 9 to accept Jesus. But no one had counseled her after that. When she saw what a change came over her husband after he accepted Jesus, she realized she wanted to give her whole life to Him, too.
At this point her husband took over the story: “She met me at the door one evening with tears in her eyes. She told me how, after she’d put the kids down for a nap, she’d gone to her bedroom, shut the door and told God she wanted Him.”
Here’s (selfishly) my favorite part of this conversation:
The wife picked back up and said, “That was in 1961. We’ve been Christians a looong time. You know, the first time I met you I knew you were a Christian. You can see Jesus in people. I saw Him in you.”
Oh, how that makes my heart soar!
You know, this heart so “prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.”
So, “here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above!”