Last week in Sunday School our lesson was about Jesus as a child. I asked the group what kind of kid they thought Jesus was. The Bible doesn’t share much of Jesus’ life as a child, so it was interesting to hear how the kids answered. I’m not sure many of them had ever thought about the fact that Jesus was a lot like them. They thought I was crazy when I suggested that Jesus probably played baseball with his friends, had chores, went to school and had toys to play with. During our conversation I could tell some of the kids were really thinking, “Wow, he was a lot like me.”
Have you ever really considered that? Jesus came to this earth fully human. He literally was just like us…only without sin and was perfect. As we read the Bible, we see several times when he is sleeping or resting, times when Jesus is sitting around a table sharing a meal and eating food with others. The Bible tells us while he was in the desert, he was tempted by the devil (sound familiar?), ate nothing and in the end was hungry. All little pieces of the love story God has given us revealing that he ‘gets’ us, he understands the trials we face. As I think of these different Bible stories I often neglect to remember that while Jesus was special, he was also a lot like me. Pretty amazing if you think about it!
This past year has been a big year in the Junior Department. We’ve completely twisted around the way we have always done Sunday School. All in an effort to better teach our children about who our God is, who his Son Jesus is to us and that the Holy Spirit is with us always to lead and guide our life. To sum it up, we are trying to continue to build a solid and secure foundation. Reminds me of one of my favorite childhood Sunday School songs, The Wise Man Built His House. Recently, during Bible study, our group read from Matthew 7 where Jesus teaches about building on a solid foundation. I enjoyed how The Message put it very bluntly:
“These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who builds his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit – but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.
“But if you just use my words in the Bible studies (or church) and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.” Matthew 7:24-27, The Message
It is my prayer that as we work in our ministry here at ARC that we don’t just use these teachings at church, in Sunday School or Bible Study, but that we work these words into every moment of our lives both in church, at home, in the world around us…and in our children’s lives.
I leave you with these questions: What sort of foundation do you have? Is it firmly in place on the rock or perhaps closer to the beach than you would care to admit? Are you actively and lovingly checking for cracks not only in your own foundation, but also your family’s? Perhaps most importantly, if these questions make you uncomfortable or question yourself, what are you going to do about it?
Inspecting my foundation, Becky Ossefoort