VBS God Lesson #2

Tonight was our second night of Hero Headquarters VBS. The night started MUCH more smoothly than yesterday and the night went very well! The crazy part was the weather. Last year it rained one night of VBS, and I had to scramble to create a rain schedule.

This year we have rain schedules prepared for each night "just in case". Today I thought we were going to have to use our "just in case" schedule! The rain started around 11am, and it was not just a simple sprinkling. It was an all-out downpour...for 6 hours! Around 3pm I decided to wait until 5pm to check the weather conditions and decide whether the "rain schedule" was necessary. At 4:40pm it didn't look like it was going to let up, and I was prepared to use the rain schedule. At 5:15pm the skies cleared, the sun shined, and it did not rain again for the rest of the night!

Monday night before I went to bed I checked the weather forecast. When I saw it was supposed to rain most of the day, I prayed it would not rain 5pm - 10pm. Like I said, by twenty minutes 'til 5pm today, I had accepted the fact that we would operate according to the rain schedule for the evening. It wasn't that I didn't trust God. In fact, I remembered last year (2009) when it rained, and how I had prayed all day it would not rain that night, but it still rained. We had VBS indoors and it turned out to be the smoothest night of the week. I thought maybe God had something similar in store for us this year.

I cannot tell you how excited I was when I walked around the front desk of the YMCA at 5:15pm and one of my volunteers said to me, "Look, blue skies!" I looked, and sure enough the clouds were clearing, the sun started to shine, and the blue sky became visible! It's like God was teasing me with a smile by waiting an extra 15 minutes! I couldn't help but be humored by it.

I think the lesson for tonight is that God can and will answer prayer. I mean, I know God answers prayer. He answers each of our prayers, even if the result is not what we requested. I'd have to say tonight was more in the positive light that God does answer prayers according to our requests. I am both grateful and encouraged by this!

VBS God Lesson #1

Our church is using Hero Headquarters from Standard Publishing for our VBS theme this year. It is a GREAT program in which kids learn about the unsung heroes of the Bible who did something simple that made a HUGE impact! It helps kids understand they can be heroes to the people around them by doing the simple things instead of chasing after the big things. It's a very powerful theme and the kids are having a BLAST!

I feel like God is trying to teach me a few lessons through VBS this year. Last night (Monday) was our first night of VBS. We had quite a few glitches going into our first night. Some volunteers showed up late, the computer didn't work right so we had to switch to my laptop, some communication gaps, registration had an unbelievably long line and we ended up surpassing the number of kids we expected. To top it all off, we started our program 30 minutes late. I was ready to pull my hair out because as I was trying to solve one problem three different people came up to me with other problems to address, and I couldn't think straight. To be completely honest, I felt like a failure and just wanted to crawl into a hole and forget about the whole thing. Everyone else had a great attitude, and once I had time to gather my thoughts I checked on the schedule to see how bad of shape we were in. By the time the third activity of the night started we were running right on schedule, and everything was running smoothly!

I think this experience was God teaching me to trust Him to take care of everything. VBS is His thing, not my thing. I may coordinate the volunteers and supplies, but He's the one who works in the hearts and lives of the teens and adults serving and the children attending. He's reminding me that He goes to work when (and before) things are "out of my hands" and out of my control. All I can say is God is Good!