There are a lot of things that need done on a typical day at helping hands. Some jobs are assigned by habit. Lisa, (one of the Lisas at least), is the undisputed authority of the baby room. Other duties, such as staff devotions, are rotated among the permanent and semi-permanent staff. Today I finally had my turn at one of these rotating jobs, planning and running the lesson for the kids room.
In some ways it's less significant than it might sound. I've helped in the kids room plenty of times, and I've even helped others plan and prep the classroom activities. Overall it's a very low pressure job. Tell a bible story (via interpreter), have a craft or activity for the kids to do that's somehow related, and then let them play games and just keep the peace until their parents are ready to go. We do a lot of coloring, cutting, and glueing in general.
I signed up a couple weeks ago, so the fact that I would be doing a story had been in the back of my mind for awhile, and as I sat down to plan my lesson, I realized that the story that was on my heart to tell was the conversion of Saul. It's not to most common of Sunday school lessons, but it's a story that I really enjoy, and that I really wanted to share with the kids at helping hands.
I didn't have everything ready the night before, but we have an hour and a half on Tuesday morning to get things ready before everyone arrives. As I was discussing the story with Bri, I mentioned how dramatic it is. Saul is the epitome of a villain, zealously hunting down Christians to arrest or kill them. And then, despite all narrative expectation, Jesus appears to him, not to curse or kill Saul, but to redeem Saul, and send him out into the world as the first and ultimate missionary of Jesus' resurrection. It's so dramatic, I wondered if we could somehow get the kids to act it out, and them Bri said that, "Hey, isn't one of the other volunteers a theater major?" Sure enough, we hunted down Mallorie, a soon-to-be theater major who is part of a short term team from New Jersey, here for two weeks, and the next thing I know, Mallorie and I are planning out how we are going to perform a skit of the conversion of Saul for twenty or so kids.
It was so fun! I had been a bit anxious about my story choice. The conversion of Saul is rich, and dramatic, and meaningful, but it's not simple, and it's not particularly easy to explain or hear sometimes. With a skit though, I felt like we were doing the story justice, and at the same time doing something more fun and interesting to the kids than a simple story book.
Calvin, one of the guys from the New Jersy team, was our Saul, Mallorie played Ananias, the man who Jesus sends to heal Saul, and I was the narrator/disembodied voice of God. That's not a job description you get to use every day. Cavin did a great job, and was a great sport about kind of getting dragged into it without a lot of preparation. Mallorie was so helpful planing everything out, and getting excited with me about it, and I think she had a lot of fun putting on a face paint beard. As of me, this was exactly what I wanted to do for my lesson. We had head coverings for the two actors, two chairs for Saul's house in Damascus and Ananias' house, and I had a pair of flashlights to be the "bright light" and my cupped hands to be a booming voice from heaven. I think our skit was over 80% narration instead of dialogue, and the run time was probably at least 25% made up of "Saul" stomping around and grunting. It was simple. It was sloppy. It was literally thrown together in less than an hour, and the kids were enthralled. I was a little too focused on pacing my words for the translator to watch the kids closely, but for once I didn't notice anyone fidgeting or bouncing in their chair. They were watching. Our translator was a ten year old Afgahn girl, whose dad helps around helping hands and sometimes leads the kids lesson himself. She was really nervous about the whole thing, but she did a wonderful job, and I am so proud of her.
Once our skit was over I summed up the message a little bit, and then passed out supplies for our craft. We colored paper plates to make masks of Saul. One side was angry Saul, before he met Jesus, and the other side was happy Saul, afterwards. The kids finished that somewhat sooner than expected, and we played games for awhile and then wound up watching tom and jerry at the very end. Slapstick us universal.
I had a lot of fun putting everything together, but more than anything else I hope the kids understood the message I was trying to share. God can forgive anyone. He doesn't just grudgingly accept sinners, he chooses to seek out even people who hate Him, who are angry at Him, so that He can change their heart and use them to do His good work. In Athens I've heard a lot of stories about Jesus appearing to Muslims in dreams. It may seem strange to us, but in Muslim culture, that is one way that God is at work, revealing himself to His children. Saul's journey: from proud and angry and rule-focused, to overwhelmed and blinded by Jesus' decision to chase after and love him, to joyful follower of the Lord, Saul's journey reminds me a lot of what hundreds and thousands of Muslims are experiencing right now. I hope it resonates also in the hearts that heard it. God is at work here in Athens and everywhere in the refugee community, pursuing His children I order to change their hearts as only He can do. How blessed am I to get to perform however small a role in His great story.
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