However, when they returned, they discovered, to their dismay, that they had missed the moment of celebration because they were not adequately prepared. Frantically they scrambled off to find some more oil. They had not prepared in advance for the delay, and now their lamps had run out of oil. Suddenly, at midnight the cry is heard that the couple is on the way. In this case, however, there had been a long delay and the girls fell asleep. It was the custom for them to have lamps burning in welcome for the new couple. The young neighborhood girls were waiting for the groom to bring his bride home. Then the bride and the groom would go to the home of the bride’s father to negotiate the dowry. In those days, the high point of the wedding came when the groom took his bride from her father’s house to their new home. Whenever I think about all of that, I remember the parable that Jesus told about the wedding celebration. Who I am, what I do and how I believe-all of that was put in place during those Sunday School years and what I learned in Sunday School has prepared me well for life ever since. (I would sing “Jesus Loves Me” at the drop of a suggestion though I could sing no better then than I can now.) All I ever needed to know about life, I learned in Sunday School. You see, I grew up in a preacher’s home where the air that I breathed was filled with the faith, and I was surrounded every day by the powerful, palpable presence of Jesus Christ. ![]() I know because Sunday School was the central reality of my growing-up years. ![]() Then they put plastic explosives in those sandbags and when Pharaoh’s army followed them, they detonated the explosives with a remote device and blew up Pharaoh’s army.” The father cried, “Wait a minute, is that the way she told the story?” The little boy shrugged, “Naw,” he said, “but if I told you the story the way she did, you’d never believe it.”Ī child’s understanding, a child’s feelings, a child’s precious soul-that’s the stuff of which Sunday School is made. They brought in pumps and they pumped out the water from between those two lines of sandbags so that they could cross on dry land. They took sand from the shore of the sea and made sandbags and they sandbagged two sides all the way across that sea. When Moses and all these people in buses got to the Red Sea, they knew they were trapped. He called out his army and tanks and half-tracks and big guns and began chasing old Moses. Pharaoh said, ‘O.K.’ Moses then loaded the people up in big buses and they started off. So he warned him to let the people go or he would be in big trouble. He said, “Well, old Moses got mad that this guy Pharaoh was holding people hostage. Or what about the time a father asked his son what he had learned in Sunday School that day? The young boy answered, “She told us about Moses crossing the Red Sea.” The father said, “Well what did she tell you about that?” The boy paused for a moment and then he broke into a remarkable narrative. ![]() “Ha,” one little boy replied, “with only two worms.” She said, “Do you suppose that with all the water around him he did a lot of fishing?” That got a reaction. The youngsters seemed baffled so the teacher pressed the issue. One Sunday School teacher, for example, asked her class how Noah spent his time on the Ark. Of course Sunday School is not only a place of great learning, it is also a place of great laughter. ![]() Some years ago Robert Fulghum had a best selling book entitled, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Well, indeed he may have learned all he needed to know in Kindergarten, but I must tell you that, for me, it happened in Sunday School.
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