Sacrifice

“This is the sacrifice pleasing to God…”

Saturday was leadership training day. The International Central Gospel Church had arranged and promoted a teacher’s conference for children and youth workers. Some had traveled over 100 miles away! Now that may seem like a distance to us, but to people in Ghana who do not own cars, it means rising up at 4:30 am and standing out on the road to wait for a “trowtrow” (crowded with as many as 25 people in a 12 person van) and riding down perilous roadways.

It is a sacrifice.

I’m not sure those gathered understood what they were attending, or exactly who the “speaker” (a clown for goodness sake) would be. But come they did and I shared my whole wealth of experience and knowledge - that took five minutes.

The remaining 2 hours and 35 minutes – God shared His love and wit, laughter and joy. The church pastor remained for the whole seminar and at the end of session one, stood and followed up with what he had taken away from the workshop. “Write this down: come as a child… write this down: you are speaking to Jesus…” It was evident the lessons were nothing I conceived on my own – God shows up faithfully again!

“your bodies…”

After a refreshing snack and walk around break, I introduced the practical application of our time together. They broke into groups, put together “skits” based on Bible stories and after 10 minutes, gave their “performance”. They laughed, acted out, changed their voices, and did fabulously well. I think they were all surprised at themselves. When we think of sacrifice, our first thought is often money – “oh I hate that tithing sermon.” Our second thought reaches for the heroic – the martyr “yes, Lord, I would give my life…” But we view our life as breath, flesh and blood. Perhaps, we need to look at our “sacrifice” as our “will” as well as our “willingness” to lay that down – when called on to use the foolish to confound the wise – to win the heart and soul of a child for the Kingdom.

I tried to stress as “teachers” of children our greatest gift to them is not necessarily imparting 15 memorized verses by the end of the year – our greatest gift is to illustrate Christ’s love. I told of my Sunday School teacher and shared my remembrance of her. Although I don’t remember her name, there are several very critical things that made an impression on me as a child.

First, she only had one arm. Where her other arm should be, she had a wooden one that was always covered with a beautiful white glove. But here is what I really remember. She would let us “knock on wood”. She allowed her class to touch her weakness, and in that weakness she was very strong indeed. That is how she illustrated that she loved us. I don’t remember one lesson from my childhood class, but I remember my teacher loved us children – I think she liked us too.

I hope the participants of the seminar walked away understanding sacrifice without love is mere ritual, but sacrifice with and for love is redemption!