Summertime tends to make me a bit nostalgic. It’s like Christmas to some extent. The smells, the trips, the food…they all remind me of happy times gone by. Being off of school, sleeping late, days at Lake Michigan, watermelon on the patio. I spend a lot of summer moments remembering being a child.
One annual summer event {that happens no matter what state I’m living in} is Vacation Bible School. I can remember a time when I didn’t even know what VBS stood for. Now, tens of years later, it’s just part of the summer time routine. Whether I can volunteer or not is usually hit or miss. Depending on my work schedule…and up until this year our summer moving schedule. But it’s always the same. Around the middle of June colorful signs appear in church lawns advertising a fun week themed around a beach, a ranch, pirates or an African safari. As you drive through town you can see kids throwing water balloons in the parking lots, getting sprayed down with hoses during some crazy relay race, and leaving churches with their hands full of amazing crafts.
This week wrapped up our VBS at First Baptist Minot. I helped out just the teensiest, tiniest bit. Coming by for only an hour or two each day. Just long enough to grab one of the snacks from the kitchen {ahh, church kitchens…} and snap a few photographs to document the occasion.
This year it got me thinking about the people who really influenced my faith as a child. People who took time out of their schedule to help me make crafts that my mom was sure to “love.” People who put on funny robes to tell me Bible stories and made up motions to catchy songs. I’ve been reflecting on the adults in my home church this week. Not only those who helped with VBS but the ones who taught my Sunday school classes, who directed our Children’s Choir, or who spent one Saturday each month with me at a club we called “Christian Critters.”
Now that I’m an adult I realize just how hard it can be to do those things. It’s not always fun, it’s not always convenient. Waking up early, clearing our plans, going to meetings, staying after church, showing up before church. It’s all work. And kids are not always on their best behavior, or openly grateful for your commitment. I know I didn’t always show my gratitude.
But the work of these men and women is priceless. The hard work of the adults in my childhood left memories that I still remember today, 20 years later. They are lessons that I teach children today, and I’ll teach my own children in the future. Children’s ministry volunteers cut and craft and pray and sing and dance. They create an atmosphere that allows children to learn and grow in faith. I have a vivid memory of my kid’s choir director, Sandy Metcalf, teaching us about the fruit of the spirit each week after we’d finished our songs. She gave each of us a little terracotta pot with some of that paper Easter basket grass in it. Then every week she’d give us one more fruit of the spirit. It was a little piece of construction paper cut in the shape of a fruit glued to a Popsicle stick. Each one had a label on it: Love, peace, kindness, gentleness, self control, patience, joy, goodness, faithfulness. In the end we all went home with a “garden.”
Take some time to reflect with me on the people who worked so hard to shape the faith you have today. We owe them our lives.
Amy
