Children's Day

I woke up on Saturday morning feeling groggy, with a slight headache and feeling dehydrated. The reason for this became clear when my Mum informed me that I had left the heating on overnight by mistake. “No wonder!” said Dad, not doing a great job of hiding his annoyance, “I was really hot last night! Never did I imagine that someone had left the heating on!” OK, OK, ol’ sieve-brain here forgot. My Mum had asked if she should turn the heating off and I thought she had, but because I didn’t give a definitive answer, she had left it on, thinking I would switch it off on my way up. I also realised that my hair had been rather damp when I went to sleep and still was slightly damp when I woke up, meaning my curls were even more mental than usual, but in a good way. Yes, I am that lazy that I let a combination of moisture, air and my sleeping pattern style my hair while I sleep. I also realised that I had gone to sleep without taking my medication, which wasn’t such a good thing.

I rushed to get ready, then realised that although Big Sis had arrived, she was still having a chit-chat with Mum downstairs and wasn’t ready yet. I took my medication and some headache tablets to sort out the migraine that was steadily forming from my night of dehydration, then had some breakfast. It was Children’s Day at church and it was awesome. There are a lot of children at our church, ranging from babies and toddlers to early teens. It was lovely to see them in charge of the entire service. They sang songs like This Little Light Of Mine to start the service, accompanied by various instruments like hand drums and tambourines (which one or two of them played a little too enthusiastically). One boy shared a poem called What If? I can’t remember all of it, but the most pertinent lines to me were: “What if God stopped loving us because we refused to love other people?”, “What if God answered our prayers the way we answered His call to service?” and “What if God took away the Bible tomorrow, because we don’t read it today?” Hmm. Food for thought.

There were a couple of ‘Adult’s Stories,’ in place of the Children’s Story they usually have in place in a normal service. The children asked if we were ‘sitting comfortably’ and kept us amused. There were three little sermonettes of about 10 minutes each, instead of the usual long one. None of the three children who spoke could be any older than 13. They spoke so well and had each done their own PowerPoint presentations to accompany their talks. They were amusing, mature, sincere and above all, each had something very important to say and to teach us. It was such an enjoyable service and me and Big Sis got a little overcome with pride for these beautiful young ones who are the church of tomorrow. I was even more amazed when I was told that they organised the service themselves and decided what they wanted to do. They finished the service with a rendition of Jesus Loves Me in various different languages, following the international nature of the congregation. There was French, Spanish, Indian (I’m not sure which dialect), several African languages (from South Africa, Zambia and maybe Zimbabwe), Tagalog and of course English. There was also a duet of the song on some sort of toy horn instrument and then a rendition with bells. They rocked.

We chatted to some friends and then drove home to drop Dad off, taking 15 minutes to get our stuff ready and have a quick cup of tea. Mum, Big Sis and I then headed off to our friend’s house for another meeting with our small group (which I keep forgetting is called Maranatha) – lunch (or course), followed by a Bible study. We were cutting it a little bit fine, as Big Sis and I both had to leave our house at 6.00pm for our respective evenings out, so really wanted to be home by about 5.00pm so we could get ready. The lunch was yummy, although not so great for Big Sis, since there was a lack of vegetarian options. I couldn’t resist having some of the Filipino beef stew, which I rarely get to eat, and then had some yummy Filipino desserts made of sticky rice and cassava.

We took some time to pray in groups of three, remembering our extended group members and friends who are currently unwell, the people in the Far East who are still recovering from the recent typhoons and floods and everyone in our group, including the couple who are due to get married next month (here and then in April in the Philippines). We then had our Bible study, talking about chapter 11 of the book of Numbers, which describes the Israelites’ journey, led my Moses, in the wilderness to the promised land of Canaan. The journey should have taken 11 days but ended up taking 40 years. We discussed the issue of faith and trust and how when we stop trusting God and try to work things out our own way, when He has already promised to so that for us, we end up making problems for ourselves and taking so much longer to get to where God wants us to be (physically [in health and location], spiritually, emotionally, etc.), missing out on all sorts of blessings on the way. It was a really good discussion and very interesting, raising lots of points that are relevant to our lives in the here and now and lots of suggestions for how to apply these things to our daily lives in a practical way. The discussion ended with a prayer and a song and then we said our goodbyes, talking to our friend V who is getting married and who Big Sis had given a spare wedding dress to (she had bought it on sale then decided it wasn’t for her). She had tried it on and apparently it had fit perfectly and really suits her. We had a feeling it would, especially since she is quite a bit taller than us, so wouldn’t need to chop off so much from the hem as Big Sis would have had to. We exchanged hugs and well wishes, feeling glad that we had joined them. Although we were running late, I wouldn't have missed it for anything.