A Sunday School response card

For the past couple of weeks I have been doing holiday Kid’s Church while the regular teachers take a break. Last week we only had eight kids, then yesterday we had 20. But both weeks we have had two sisters, who look exactly the same only one is taller. Last Sunday the younger one left her Madeleine-esque red wool coat behind, so I took it out to the playground to her. She said, ‘can you give it to my Dad’, so I asked which one was her Dad and she said ‘the man over there in the blue trousers’. After glancing around I realised that by blue trousers she actually meant jeans. Have you ever tried to find a guy who is not wearing jeans at church? So when I worked it out I had a funny little chat to the Dad about ‘blue trousers’.

At the time I thought it was a little odd that she had told me to give the coat to her Dad, but just thought ‘oh well, maybe Mum is the one who is always leaving stuff behind and Dad can keep track of things’.

On most Sundays that I do this gig, soon after the children first arrive in the hall for kid’s church we get them to sit down on a mat on the floor as we begin. Yesterday I noticed the older sister kneeling on the floor bent over scribbling on one of the response cards from church, that people usually fill in their details and prayer requests etc on, and I thought to myself ‘what’s she doing doodling on a response card?’, but she wasn’t causing any trouble and it soon disappeared and I thought no more of it. What happens is that the kids all go into church for some songs with their family, then there is the kids talk and then we leave for the hall. So as far as I recall they are not in church for the news or the response card notification, yet she had obviously appropriated one of these cards from the pew bibles and determined to bring it with her and put it to use.

Then at the end of Sunday School she actually handed in this response card, to the girl who had done most of the leading of the class (I spent a lot of the morning with a sad four-year-old, who had attempted an escape and wasn’t coping, sitting in my lap – after some negotiating she decided that I was OK and she would stick it out with me). We looked at the card, and she had filled in her name and address, coloured in some of the little circles that people usually tick, and on the back she had written some prayer requests. The first one was a request that we please pray for her Mum, that she might come to church and get to know Jesus. The second one was to say she was sorry for fighting with her sister.

We were moved, almost watery. The sweet, earnest little thing. I am definitely going to be praying for her Mum.