Between the Lines of the Sermon

As we climb up the stairs from the Sunday school classroom to the auditorium, I think about how well the children behaved today. A few of them may have had too much sugar in their cereal this morning. Anyway, we all sit down in the back pew, and the kids start talking. One of them is opening a hymnal, the other flipping through a tract. Don't rip it; don't rip it! - is all I can think. One of the girls is studying a missionary card, and she asks me what a missionary is. "A missionary--" HEY, WHO'S THAT?!? the boy next to me interrupts. "A missionary," I continue, "is a person that tells people about what Jesus did for them." The teacher and I calm the kids down for the singing. The pastor says "...page 541" and one of the kids wants to find it, starting at page one and flipping page by page. She eventually resorts to flipping about  50 pages at one time and finds it, only to sing the last five words of the song. Here comes the prayer... "okay, everyone, we're going to pray now," and I motion to them to fold their hands. "Dear Heavenly Father," the prayer begins, BANG! - there goes that hymnal...

...We're in the middle of the sermon. I've got a girl beside me that found the color-by-numbers page in the coloring book. She can't read, so she needs me to read them for her. Oops. There go the crayons. As I bend down to pick them up, she asks me about the lesson. I wince as the Pastor pauses and she is talking. But her question surprises me... "Jesus loves the children like in our lesson today, right? Is the baby in my picture Jesus? Why is He a baby? Why are there animals all around? I sit up, hands full of crayons, and glance at her pink-skinned baby Jesus, and smile. The important thing about this morning isn't that the kids are perfect and quiet during the sermon, or that the sound of their coloring is soft, but the important  thing this morning is that Jesus loves the little children, and between the lines of the sermon, these children are learning of Jesus's love for them.

Sometimes God speaks to me in church through the great correlating sermon points, but, sometimes like this morning, He is speaking to me through one of His kids, and maybe even through the dropping hymnals and crayons.