Remember when you and your spouse started dating? If you were like us, you spent hours talking about everything under the sun. You learned about each other’s families, shared hopes and dreams and eventually decided to share your lives permanently.
Fast forward a few years and now you have a child. Or children. Perhaps lots of children! Each child seems to come with his or her own set of needs and dreams, which often keeps us in constant motion. Some days, you are lucky to give your spouse a quick kiss before collapsing in exhaustion. An actual meaningful conversation seems an impossible dream.
Our marriages aren’t necessarily bad, but over time couples with children can slowly start drifting apart and may even divorce. Yet study after study teaches us children fair better in homes with healthy marriages. I would imagine the stronger the marriage, the better the possibility for positive results.
We know the health of our marriage is important, but that requires work we don’t think we have the time to do right now. All of those meaningful conversations during dating have long sense dissolved into discussions of who will take whom where and what needs to be fixed around the house. You are not even sure you have time to know yourself anymore and your spouse is slowly becoming an acquaintance.
Teaching a Sunday School class can be the most rewarding and the most frustrating volunteer position in the Church. Most of us spend countless hours and a good bit of our own money trying to make the Bible and God’s principles understandable to the children we teach. The hugs and the eyes that light up when they understand an important Bible truth are balanced out by the child who attends sporadically or comes in after we have just taught the most important part of the lesson. Sometimes it is hard to know if you are impacting the spiritual lives of these precious little ones at all.
I have a confession to make. When our Bible classes at Church let out, I am starving. We have our classes after worship and when classes finish, I am ready for lunch. Countless delays gathering everyone and everything that needs to leave the building means we are often racing to get food in me before I get really cranky! Once the food gets on the table, what happened in Bible class is often forgotten amidst stories of the funny or interesting things that happened at Church.
Being a Sunday School teacher for children and teens is a special calling. There are many wonderful Christian men and women who spend countless hours and a good bit of their own money to try and provide your child with the most meaningful Bible class experience possible.