Back to Sunday School

Back to Sunday school. I’m talking the real deal, one room school house type Sunday school with all age groups. Been there lately? We were this past Sunday, filling in for my friend, Naomi, the regular teacher. Both her helpers were unable to be there that day either, so Randy stepped in and took it on. I was his side-kick helper, but actually I didn’t do much at all.

Adamaris, (a beautiful name pronounced Ah-dah-mah-REES’; Ada (Ahdah) for short), sat in as she usually does to help with the kids. She is the fourteen year old daughter of a couple in the church who, like Randy and I (and Mustard Seeds West), are helping plant Plaza Iglesia Cristiana, a bi-lingual church, in Southeast Bakersfield, one of our city’s neediest neighborhoods. We thought it would be good for the kids if we had Ada with us, since they know her and she knows the routine. But the kids were fine with us, probably because they see us every Sunday in church. They know we are a part of the church family.

In the telling of the Bible story of the day— the one in which Paul and Silas, beaten and imprisoned in Philippi, were singing at midnight—Randy started singing a song he said Paul and Silas might have been singing:

“What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Oh, precious is the flow, that makes me white as snow. No other (thing) I know,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

I got the biggest blessing when the boy next to me, Leon is his name, started singing it with him. And he knew all the words. Others chimed in softly as well. But Leon sang it in a regular singing voice, with a big smile, eyes riveted to Randy. He knew that song.

Why was this such a blessing to me? This young man, maybe ten years old, is being raised by his grandmother, along with his four other siblings, one of whom is his infant sister. Grandma has serious health problems and no extra money for raising these children. Their mother just keeps dropping them off to Grandma. And she keeps taking them in and loving them.

And they are there every Sunday, scrubbed and every bit the squirmy handfuls you might imagine.

But they are in Sunday school every Sunday. And they can sing with a smile, “What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus ….”

Oh, pray for Plaza Iglesia Cristiana, as we reach into SE Bakersfield with the good news that, yes, Jesus can wash away all our sins by his precious blood.