Unexpected Sources of Blessing

I usually write about parenting. This time I am writing as a youth minister and a wife and a daughter.

A month ago it was Wednesday morning and youth group loomed near. I had a lesson planned, but I didn’t like it. It seemed random and disconnected.

As I ate breakfast with my husband I asked him, “What should I teach those kids tonight?”

 “Teach them something about acknowledging that people older than them might be worthy of a little of their respect, and might know a few things worth knowing. And teach them not to be so self-absorbed,” was his reply.

 I suspected this answer did not spring from the depths of spiritual contemplation, but more likely a recent and frustrating conversation with one or the other of our teenagers. I was pretty sure I couldn’t do all of that in 60 minutes. I gave him a noncommittal response. It seemed like a kernel of something, but I wasn’t sure what and, well, I hadn't really expected an anwer.

After my husband left for the office my mother called. She had thirty minutes to kill between two appointments and wondered if she could stop by. Well, I wasn't getting anywhere with a new lesson so I was happy for the distraction.

When Mom arrived she began to tell me about her morning’s work. It was her first visit to a nursing home as a hospice volunteer. She told me stories about chatting with those who were dying. She told me a lot about the training. She mentioned she is going to have to keep up with baseball because several of the gentlemen wanted to discuss the latest games. Just before she left she mentioned that if my youth kids ever had any extra time maybe they could make picture books for her. At the training they had received simple books made from construction paper and yarn. Each page having a nice picture from a magazine or calendar glued on its. The hospice volunteers used these as conversation starters and a pleasant way to pass the time during a visit.

Now to give this some context, many, many people think the teenagers at the church should do various things, usually things no one else would want to do. My mom is not one of those people.  In my four years as a youth minister my mother has never suggested that I get the teens to do anything, so for her to suggest an activity was out of the ordinary.

After she left I was praying and then it seemed so clear. I knew somewhere in the Bible it said that families should care for their own widows and the church should care for those who had no families to care for them. On-line bibles are a wonderful thing for busy youth ministers. A quick little word search and I found it in 1 Timothy. I had a lesson.

That evening, I explained a little about hospice, about caring for people at the end of their lives, about our responsibility to our grandparents and old aunties and even our parents. I asked them to consider that sometimes caring for others is not about us at all, but about our duty to others and to God. We read the verses in 1 Timothy 5.

I told them the story of being in the fifth grade and dreading a visit to my grandmother’s house. My mother told me that my grandmother wouldn’t be with us much longer so we had to go. We went that year and every year after that. Nineteen years later, when I was 29 years old and attended that grandmother’s funeral, I was glad that I had visited with her all of those times since my first complaint. Sometimes we do things because it is right, whether we want to or not. Sometimes we are blessed as a result.

 I explained what we were going to make. The kids were very quiet, they were very intense and then they dug into the project with sincere enthusiasm. They were seriously concerned about choosing the right pictures for someone who was dying. For a few minutes, they were thinking of someone they didn’t know, would never know and doing their best to care for them with their project. When we wrapped up we had at least 30 different pages for my mom to assemble as books.

They understood the message of caring for the dying, of looking outward at people different in age and experience, rather than inward toward their own peer group. Through my husband’s words and my mother’s hospice ministry God was able to create compassion in our teens which connected them to a different generation if only for a few minutes on a Wednesday night.

I couldn't have asked for more than that. It was a surprising and blessed evening.

Listen for God's voice in places you least expect it.

Michelle

Planting Seeds

   Planting seeds seems to be a theme that keeps coming up, in newletters and articles I have run across; “As you sow, so shall you reap” and “Some sow the seeds and others gather the harvest .” The words are all around me these days. The idea that I am planting seeds, small thoughts and beliefs that will someday grow into a real and active faith and compassion is what I need to hold onto.


   Working as a children’s minister and a youth minister I often have to remind myself about this concept. The work seems long and the rewards, while not few, they are sporadic. There are evenings when I think I should check my forehead for a lump because I have been banging my head against the wall for so long. When a member of the youth group tells a member of the clergy that she doesn’t think the quote, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is from the bible. When a child mentions after singing “Father Abraham” that he knows who Abraham is; he is on the penny. When, within moments of completing a lesson on the last being first and first being last, there is nearly a fist fight to be the first to get the popcorn. These are the times when I think perhaps the seeds have just caught the wind and never even landed, much less taken root.
   But then there are times when I feel redeemed. I feel like the Spirit of God is really among us. When I couldn’t pull the youth group away from hearing stories and working on jigsaw puzzles with the residents of an assisted living apartment. When nine teenagers volunteered without any coercion to get up an hour early during Mission Week so that they could go out and distribute care packages and sandwiches to the homeless, all before a full day of work in the Florida sun. When a seven year old willingly left her known friends and welcomed a new child into her game during children’s church. Those are the times when I am caught off guard and see something of the love we have been trying to teach them all along.

   The seeds of God’s words and commands to love one another are there. Some are just dormant a little longer than others. Some results we will never see. Some results are for others to harvest not us. All parents, grandparents, Sunday school teachers, youth workers and others who touch the lives of children take heart, keep planting the seeds of love, humility, honor, peace, patience, faith and all of the virtues to which we are called. It is the tiny acts of faith, faith in the seeds we are planting and in God’s hand in bringing them to fruition, from which the faith of a new generation will grow.

Michelle