Simple Lessons

Good morning! It’s a beautiful day here in Colorado, although we sure could use some rain. I know they are getting way too much in Indiana and some other states. Maybe if we ask, the Lord could shift it west a bit?

I want to share with you something special that happened in our town last week.

Their little voices, raised in unison, filled the auditorium at the elementary school. They sang praise songs with titles like “Custom Built Heart”, “Rev It Up”, and “High Performance Mind” that carried a theme of car racing . Decorations included various engine parts, repair tools, and of course, black and white checked flags. One of the highlights of the week’s activities was the pinewood derby, held after each child had custom designed their own car.

Although the words to the songs wore on the nerves of the adults who spent all five days there, the message, reinforced with hand signs, ingrained itself in the memories of the children. They all went home with CDs and I know my granddaughter, for one, has played it a hundred times since Friday.

I’m talking about our Vacation Bible School. One hundred forty-five kids attended. That’s impressive for a town that boasted thirty-two seniors in our graduating class this year.

Even as joy filled my heart while I listened to the sweetness of young voices praising God through song and memory verses, a touch of sadness pervaded my mind. How many times will those little ones run into the guardrail or collide with each other along the racetrack of life, robbing their “custom built” hearts of the wonder of God’s love? How long before their “high performance” minds are stymied by the low-grade fuel that drives the motivations of man in this day and age?

It’s easy to start out on the track of goodness and love toward God and others, but a bump in the pavement, a distraction on the sidelines, a wrong decision, flips us upside down in an instant. We find ourselves hurt and bleeding and resenting whatever it is that got in our way, and the love is replaced with greed and hatred and the worship of false gods.

Keeping our eyes focused on Jesus is a difficult task, not because of who He is, but because of who we let ourselves become. We shift our gaze away from the cross and shove God’s simple commandments to the background of our lives, then we wonder why we end up digging ourselves out of a horrible wreck.

We need to embrace the words to those simple childhood songs and commit some basic Bible verses to memory in order to focus on the One for Whom we are running the race and the prize that awaits us at the finish line.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” – Luke 10:27.

“We love because He first loved us.” – I John 4:19

By the way, my granddaughter, pictured above, won third place for design of her derby car. Wahoo, Madison! Grandma does love to brag!