Listen, what type of church that would allow me to teach young people is really my own business and that is not a very nice thing for you to think!
By the way it is a Pentecostal church, and you know we're just a little on the unconventional side of Christianity anyway.
Anyway, as I was saying, I am a Sunday School teacher.
Tomorrow we start new lessons and because preparation is never my strong point, I don't have the new Sunday School lesson. So I am making one up. It's simple and I think will work well with my kids who are between the ages of 9 - 12, would you like to hear it?
Of course you would.
I receive devotionals by email about once a week or so and this week's devotional was about a man who was in Germany and did not speak German. He goes to a party of his German wife's family and feels uncomfortable and out of place because he cannot speak the language. People come up to greet him and he mutters a few greeting words in German and then let's his greeters know he can not understand them. They smile politely and move on to another party member. Finally another man steps forward and says in English that he used to work in the States and begins to have a conversation with the American.
The man realizes that all the feelings of self consciousness, all his doubt and all his uncomfortableness is erased because now he has someone who can speak in his own language. He finally feels understood and has found his place at the party. They have a wonderful conversation and find that they have a lot in common.
This is how Jesus is. He can erase all our feelings of self consciousness. He can remove all doubt. He can make us comfortable. Because he came to Earth and lived just like you and I. Every emotion we have felt, he has felt. Every hurt that can be imagined, he has hurt. If you have ever been misunderstood or felt out of place, He understands and He has a place for you. He can speak our language.
I will place this story in a middle school. My students will be a foreign exchange student, and I will ask them to try and imagine what it feels like to be misunderstood. Knowing their age group, I'm sure that being misunderstood will not be difficult for them to imagine.
I will let them know that even if they feel like no one understands them, Jesus does.
Who knows? Tomorrow might even be the day that they start to listen to me. :)