This past week, my church hosted Vacation Bible School (VBS); the second greatest thing next to Christmas and Air Conditioning. During the week we taught the kids on how to keep God's green earth pretty and clean, along with respecting others and the world.
To me, being in a position of leadership at VBS requires you to teach and reinforce the lessons that the kids get from the story, while trying to incorporate it into every activity possible. Although I was leader and "taught" the stories through games, I definitely feel like the kids taught me more. By the end of the week, every age group taught me something special.
I really do find it very interesting how your perception of God changes over time.
Let's start with the cute little munchkins: 3 year olds.
One day, we ended our activity a little early and so I decided that we would play a game of pictionary on the day-erase board. (side note: this worked great with 4th graders). Any who, I guess it slipped my mind that 3 year olds do not know how to draw and that pictionary may be a hard concept to grasp. We played anyways. To narrow down the choices the category was "pretty things that God made" (narrowed it down to literally everything on the earth, nice Sophie.) The first three drawings included nothing less than: trees, lions, and a sunshine, which were pretty easy guesses. Up next comes a sweet girl who was beyond excited to draw the thing she had been "thinking about ALL day". She looks at me to reassure that the category was "pretty things that God made", I nodded yes, and she proceeded to draw. She started out with a giant circle, and then she drew a lot of little circles in it. Everyone in the room had officially run out of guesses. If it wasn't a rock, ladybug, or person, what was it? After 20 MINUTES of refusing to give us a hint, I finally got it out of her. She looks at me and said "if it's not a rock and it's not a person then it has to be a tater tot! Does this mean I win?"
I think a lot of times we continue to look at the big picture that God made the trees, the oceans, and all of this beautiful nature and we forget to pay attention to those tater tots he also blessed us with (add Tony's seasoning and its a BIG blessing). A lot of times people, myself included, get so tied up in the things we "want" that we forget to be thankful for the things we have. We forget to be thankful that we woke up this morning, have people who love us, have basic necessities. We are blessed. I need to start being thankful for all of the many tater tots God has given us, along with the trees, the oceans, and all of the world.
Now let's wrap it up with one of our other groups, the 1st and 2nd graders. Somehow, they found out that I had been playing "Sardines" with the older kids. For those who don't know what "Sardines" is, it is a game of reverse hide and seek. Instead of everyone hiding and one person finding, one person hides and everyone looks for them. When you find the person, you quietly hide with them until the last person finds them, who in return becomes the sardine. Anyways, they decided they wanted to play too but unlike the 4th graders, they weren't very good. They had excellent hiding spots but couldn't grasp the concept of don't yell "OOH OOH I FOUND HER" instead of hiding with the person.
But all of this kind of got me thinking. It reminded me of a Happening talk Claire Bailey gave. She talked about how your faith is kind of like a game of Hide and Seek. Basically, God is hiding behind the curtain trying not to give up his hiding spot while you endlessly search for him. The second you find him he then tells you about how he's been there the whole time and how you just kept walking past him, but forgot to check that one spot. The game of sardines was kind of the same thing. This time, God was still hiding and everyone was looking for him. Instead of finding him and hiding with him, you just got to excited and had to tell everyone about it. You screamed at the top of your lungs "OOH OOH I FINALLY FOUND HIM" because for a minute it felt like you never would. And you call all of your friends to come look and see what you did, because you didn't want anyone to be last finding out about God.
When I got home from a long day at VBS, I watched an episode (or five) of Season 14 of Grey's Anatomy. In Season 14, Dr. April Kepner - one who is very religious and can quote scripture like no other, is frustrated with her faith and is currently treating a Rabbi. She confides in his presence and decides to express why she is so mad at God. She knows how real he is, but can't seem to find him in all of the terrible things that continuously happen to her. In conclusion, the Rabbi looks at her and says "If you only believe in God when good things are happening, do you really have faith?" (or something along those lines)
So that is what we must do. We must trust that God didn't break the rules of Sardines and that he just found a really good hiding spot. We must believe that he is somewhere close trying to not to giggle, so he doesn't give his spot away. You just have to believe that even when the game gets really hard and the search gets really long, he is there, and you aren't the only one still looking.
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