When my husband and I were first married (and were very young adults), he woke me up on the Sunday after our three-day honeymoon, saying “Get up. It’s time to get ready for Sunday School.” There he stood in suit and tie. As I lay there in a daze, wondering what in the world he was talking about, I scanned my memory for any point in time when we had discussed going to Sunday School. Nope. Nothing. We had attended church worship services together and there was an unspoken assumption that would be a pattern in our lives. But we had not discussed Sunday School. However, given my faith history in both a Nazarene church and a Methodist congregation with some Catholic influence sprinkled in, I could not find an argument for not complying. So, I reasoned with myself that he had not urged me to do something wrong, so there was no acceptable reason to be uncooperative. So, we went.
While I was a regular attender of church worship services, I had given up Sunday School as a teenager because it seemed largely irrelevant, at least in my experience at that time. Though we had a respectable teacher, he was not gifted in that skill and largely just passed around the quarterly for us to take turns reading. I figured I could do that at home, so I stopped attending. Sleeping later seemed like a better use of my time—especially after a Friday night game, Saturday afternoon chores, Saturday night date to the movies and a pile of delayed homework to attack before Monday morning.
But, that morning in Sunday School with my groom, I found myself in an entirely different context with a gifted teacher, expounding on wonderful truths from God’s Word. I was hooked! Fast forward 63 years and I marveled again this past Sunday at the power of the Christian scriptures. The Divine influence on our souls through ancient texts never ceases to amaze me. While we can be touched emotionally and psychologically by poems, stories, songs, legends and myths, there is a spiritual power that accompanies the reading of Judeo-Christian scriptures with a heart open to the Divine activity in the world and in our lives.
Spanning many centuries, the various biblical texts have come to us from men and women of faith whose lives did not all intersect due to distance and time frames, as well as few avenues for communication. They told their stories from their experiences of living out their faith in God in places and circumstances separated by generations, in many cases. Yet, it all holds together overall with amazing congruence.
Over thousands of years, there is a silver thread that runs from beginning to end and weaves a story of redemption that is unparalleled in any literature. Though there are variations in some stories, the basic truths conveyed have the capacity to change our hearts and lives, when read with our souls open to faith in a God who communicates with those to whom He gave the gift of communication in creation.
It stands to reason that a God who can create a world full of creatures, including mankind, with awareness and ability to communicate, is also a God who communicates. The biblical creation account asserts that God created mankind in His own image. We carry in our humanity some characteristics of the God who created us. Over and over, the biblical witness testifies that God communicates. We who communicate were created by a God who communicates, and He entrusts the communication of Divine truth to His highest creation—men and women, boys and girls. Imagine that. And it can happen in Sunday School!
The witness of scripture itself is clear in Hebrews 4:12:
Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. [emphasis mine]
According to the New Testament, the word of God came to life in Jesus. God’s greatest communication was the gift of Jesus Christ who came into the world as the Incarnate Son of God – a singular event in the history of the cosmos. And He came with one goal: to communicate with His creation and reconcile them to Himself through redemption. As He walked this earth, ministering to the people with open hearts in His day, He showed us what God is like—and what we can become.
The Apostle John declared in John 1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. . . . No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made Him known.
That brings me back to Sunday School. This past Sunday, the lesson text was from I Corinthians 3 and verse 16 stood out to me: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” Let that sink in. We are not just human creations capable of communication, but we are created with the capacity of being indwelt by the Spirit of God who created us—by the Holy Presence of God who reveals Himself in Jesus Christ. That is what it means to follow Jesus Christ—to trust, believe and obey until we become conformed to his likeness as a Temple of the Holy Spirit of God.
As we allow the Spirit of Jesus to live in us and conform us into our highest destiny, the Spirit of the Word becomes living and active in our lives, and we become a holy dwelling place for God’s Spirit to work in and through us. One of my favorite newer hymns is “Ancient Words” by Lynn DeShazo. Its message reminds us that God’s timeless Word transforms our hearts and lives. I encourage you to let God’s Word change you into His highest plan for your life, and discover the blessing of Sunday School!
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
