I stand at the white board in front of the class, marker in one hand, a story I am about to read in the other. It’s a combination class of homeschooled fourth through sixth graders who attend classes twice a week at our church. These are offered through a homeschool co-op formed to share teaching responsibilities.
This is an age I love to teach. Most of the students are also in my Sunday School class and are eager, well-mannered, and fun. I feel like water in a room full of sponges.
I am about to read a story whose theme is taken from Ephesians 2:
You lived in this world without God and without hope. But Christ Himself. . .united us into one people when He removed the wall between us and Him.
I draw what I hope looks like a wall in the middle of the board, a stick figure on one side (man) and “GOD” on the other. “What are some of the attributes of God?” I ask. Hands go up. “Loving!” “Kind!” “Merciful!” In the next few moments I explain how sin separates us from a righteous God—and why the Cross was necessary. “This is,” I tell them, “at the heart of what we believe.”
I stop for a moment and stare at the board with its wonky brick wall (I am no artist) dividing stick figure from Savior. It hit me as I spoke those familiar words yet again, that this is the fundamental work of evangelism. The Story must be told again and again to generation after generation. This is not news to most believers reasonably educated in the Bible. But in that moment, inexplicably, I felt the honored weight of spiritual ancestry, the sense of being joined to the work in this generation, one child, one class, one congregation, one outreach, one mission at a time.
A family of Korahite Levites wrote several of the Psalms in this week’s readings. They held a position of high honor under King David and were musically trained. Here is how they begin Psalm 44:
O God, we have heard it with our own ears—our ancestors have told us of all You did in their day, in days long ago.
Again and again in the Old Testament, this refrain: When your son [or daughter] asks. . .then you shall say. . .
That great cloud of witnesses did their part, and here we are—untold numbers of godly parents, pastors, teachers, missionaries, evangelists, neighbors, Christians in every walk of life—telling the Story yet again.
There is a short silence in the classroom. “Questions?” I ask. No. Some look thoughtful, some rather serious. I begin to read. What a responsibility. What an honor.
Photo: crosswalk.com