What Are You Teaching Those Children?

It all went so quickly.  Martha had been ill, but not this sick.  So it was a surprise to Joyce and her siblings when they received the call: Martha was in the hospital. It was early evening.  Then a second call came: hurry to the hospital.  And then there they were,  Joyce and her siblings, looking at Martha as she prepared to take her last breath.  Joyce, wanting to offer words of comfort, hunted for the Bible and turned to Psalm 23. Realizing that she left her glasses at home, she reached out her arm as far as she could, but the words were just a gray blob. So Joyce summoned up old Sunday School memorization lessons and she started reciting Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd…”  She surprised herself at how well it came back to her. She could see the expression on Martha’s face change as the familiar words were repeated.  Then Joyce asked Martha if she would like to pray. Martha somehow managed to nod in assent, so Joyce and Martha and the others bowed their heads, folded their hands, and everyone followed Martha’s lead in saying “Our Father…”. And then Martha slipped from this world through the thin veil and started her dance into the world to come.

As I prepared for the funeral I couldn’t help but think of all of the church teachers and pastors who taught Martha and Joyce where to find Psalm 23; of those formative leaders who coaxed Joyce into memorizing “the whole thing.”  I marveled at the fact that someone taught the family the Lord’s Prayer, and that it had been used enough to remain in the memory banks of these adult siblings.  As I delivered the funeral message, doing my best to put Martha’s life and death into perspective for the mourners who survived her, I saw the children, assembled there to watch and learn how to mourn for their aunt, a lesson they will need to use often in the next 60 or so  years of their lives.

And then it struck me.  The question flooded my mind “Will those children know Psalm 23, or even where to find it, when they spend the last hours with their siblings in 60 years? What are you teaching those children?”  I could say that the church lost the culture wars to work schedules which exhaust parents; to youth sports leaders who discovered that their activities were a better option for many than Sundays in church; or a dozen other excuses for our failure to reach the very children the church is charged with teaching.  Or, I could choose to not accept defeat. I could choose to rally the church and parents to start learning how to reach and teach the precious children who will one day be at each other’s bedside grasping for words that would be their only comfort in life and in death.  I choose to engage in the mission for the children.  You?