It all began when I asked to help teach a Sunday school class with my fellow teammates. It was Saturday, and we were trying to figure out what to teach. I immediately suggested Jonah and the Big Fish (the Bible does not say technically say whale, as a side note) because it’s one of my favorite stories in the Bible (spoiler alert: I LOVE improvisation).
The following morning, when we were waiting in our shack of a Sunday school classroom held together by wire and tin, we only had six kids show up. The other class however had probably 60 kids. So, we decided to combine our classrooms “inside” the half built classroom building with no walls and half of a roof. Thus, we began to act out the story of Jonah and the BIG FISH (but of course, I am incapable of resisting any opportunity to act). Our lovely narrator Mary was fantastic as Caitlin, and I acted it out. Caitlin was Jonah, and I was…everything else. I became silly-fied as I acted out the sailors who threw (or gently pretended to push) Caitlin off of our three plastic chairs, which was our boat, and the Big Fish who ate Caitlin/Jonah and vomited her up. The kids cracked up as I danced around the boat like the storm, and blew on it like the wind. Their faces were semi-confused as I made fish faces at them, but they’ll catch on next time (hehehe…next time!).
It felt so right as I was teaching the Bible to little kids. In fact, I believe that God made me to teach his word. My passion for the Bible and its truth rushes through my veins, and I can hardly stay silent.
For example, the story of Jonah is predominately about obedience to God, right? But God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and what did he do? He ran away. But eventually he obeyed (after being swallowed by a BIG FISH…yeah…I would go too) and traveled to Nineveh to tell them to repent. And after basically saving a whole city (who had repented) from the wrath of God, what did he do? He MOPED. Jonah was no hero. And neither am I. How often have I tried to run away from God and all of the good things he has for me to do and to be? Everyday actually. Everyday my flesh is fighting against the Holy Spirit that God placed within me, and everyday the Lord proves to me that there is nothing that I can ever do to make myself sinless. But Jesus gave me a way out by offering himself as a sacrifice and thus dying to sin, he rose again to proclaim his victory over it. Therefore the blood of the Jesus covers me, and I also have victory over sin.
Memory verse of the day:
Isaiah 43:17 “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.”
