Sermonette: Aug 26, 2019

You have probably heard this a thousand times already, but where has the summer gone? Wasn’t it in just the last couple of weeks I wrote an article on the kids getting out of school and people going on vacation? It sure seems like it. Now the kids are back in school, some happily and some sad. The same goes for the teachers I suspect. On the positive side, if your summer was a little on the boring side, we have the football and volleyball seasons starting for our entertainment. It will be fun to cheer them on again this year and I look forward to it.

The children will be back in Sunday School in churches in the area as well as some churches that host Wednesday after-school programs. What a great thing that is for them. It seems that every year our area churches find it difficult to find teachers for these groups. What a shame. Speaking from personal experience, it is a blast working with these kids as they learn about faith in God and learn stories from the Bible. The classic stories from the Old Testament like Daniel in the Lions’ Den, Noah and the Ark, David and Goliath and many more, are a delight for them to hear. Learning about Jesus and how he loved having children around him hits right at home with these kids. Also, don’t be surprised if your own faith grows as well as you teach them.

Webster defines faith as an unquestioning belief, complete trust. Add in the biblical edition of faith, a belief in things not seen and we get a more complete picture of what our faith should be. It is both humbling and a bit scary when we realize that as we teach our little ones about Jesus and faith in God, they believe us. With an unquestioning belief, they trust us to be telling them the truth. Chapter 18 in Matthew gives us strong indication of Jesus’ thoughts about children. From verse 3, he tells us that unless we become like children, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. From Chapter 19 we hear Jesus saying let the children come to me and do not stop them. What can we take from this? When we read our bibles, we should believe what we read with a faith of complete trust that what we are reading is true. We can take it to be true just as a little child is hearing it for the first time and believes it unquestionably. So, as this new school year begins, let us remember the vows we spoke at our children’s or grandchildren’s baptism. We vowed to place the word of God in their hands and to bring them to worship. We can do that by encouraging their attendance this fall in a Sunday School or Wednesday after school programs. As our Lord said in Matthew 19, it to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.