We looked for the key high and low. Okay, I take that back. We looked high.
Last Sunday, my Sunday School co-worker Mary and I couldn’t find the key to our closet. Since I’m the keeper of the key and had been out of town the prior Sunday, Lisa (another co-worker then) had placed it in the cabinet above the sink so it would be there for me when I returned.
The problem? Lisa was not there last Sunday, and we didn’t know exactly where in the cabinet she placed it. My first attempts at looking and feeling around yielded no results. Next we started pulling items out of the cabinet and found everything but the key (not wasted effort — it needed to be cleaned anyway). We decided Lisa must have meant to leave the key and then forgot to put it in the cabinet.
While we were involved in this search-turns-into-cleaning-project, Alyssa, our lone little student that day (we teach in the nursery), had been happily having a snack and playing. Even though I had taken the Bible out of the cabinet first thing and placed it and the pictures for that Sunday’s story in the same spot I do every week, it was midway through our class time, and Alyssa still hadn’t wandered over and “found” our Bible. I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands.
“Alyssa, where’s our Bible?” I asked. I knew that’s all it would take to send her hurrying over to find the Bible so we could begin our weekly singing of The B-I-B-L-E. As always, I patted the Bible and pointed to each letter as we sang the song. After our customary clapping and yays, Alyssa opened the Bible, and what do you think we found there? That’s right. The key!
Mary and I laughed and wondered why we hadn’t looked there first. Of course, the Bible held the key! Immediately we started tossing out truths we could teach the kids in the future, while hiding a key in the Bible on purpose.
We could teach them about finding treasures in the Bible. We could teach them that the Bible holds the key to eternal life. We could teach them that the key to wisdom for every situation they’ll enounter is found within its pages… And then we remembered we teach one and two-year-olds :)
We laughed again, realizing these truths were a little too abstract for our little ones. In fact, they were suited better to us.
So to all of us, let me pose these questions. Have we found the key to eternal life in the Word of God? Do we mine its pages looking for treasures? Do we seek wisdom from the Bible for our everyday lives and the perplexing situations that arise? Do we hurry to the Bible with excitement the way little children do?
“Oh Father, send us running to your Word each day!”
“When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O LORD God Almighty.” Jeremiah 15:16
*Flickr photo by ~Brenda Starr~, Creative Commons License
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