As I count my blessings this Thanksgiving, one in particular comes to mind. The blessing began four years ago with the initiation of the One Another Sunday School class at our church. We began by studying phrases in the Bible in which Christians are admonished to serve, love, encourage and pray for one another. It is a very interactive class, led by a family man.
He wears his choir robe like a man – with polished cowboy boots underneath. He considers ties useless, calls’em neck rags. As far as he is concerned, only choir robes rank lower. He was complaining one Sunday morning about having to wear that choir robe when he appealed to the class, “Who needs to wear one to sing anyway?”
From the back of the room, his wife answered, “Now, dear, you know you were mighty glad for that choir robe the week your zipper broke.”
His face reddened, “Ohh, honey, you didn’t have to say that.” He never voiced another complaint about having to wear a choir robe.
Earlier this fall, he was making a point in the lesson about reaping what is sown. Turning to one of the women in the class, he asked, “When you plant a tomato seed, what do you get?”
She murmured the obvious, “tomatoes.”
He turned to the man on the opposite side of the room, “and when you plant corn, what do you get?”
Without hesitation, the man answered, “Deer.”
We lost his original point in the ensuing laughter.
We can laugh at and with another, because we cry for and with one another.
He makes it a comfortable class for interaction by readily admitting his personal battles against everyday temptations and need for a place where we pray for one another. At the time the class was organized, my husband and I were in the midst of an unspeakably difficult personal crisis. We needed all the encouragement and prayers we could get, even if we could barely put words to the unspeakable.
Our caring for one another begins in the first few minutes of class when the gentleman steps back from his role as teacher and asks for praise and prayer in the lives of class members that week. As he writes them on a white board, folks ask for more information, share how God worked in their life in a similar circumstance or, when a prayer request weighs heavily with pain and sorrow, the man who hates ties, puts down the marker and says, “Let’s gather round and lay on hands and pray right now.”
We stop, gather round the hurting one and pray. Those prayers are not demanding God do what we want and think best. They are simple prayers for grace to deal with the pain and sorrow. Prayers for an increased awareness of God’s presence and guidance when the circumstances fight to drown out His still small voice. Most of all, they are prayers of thanksgiving for God who goes with us and sends us one another to be there in the midst of life’s hardest, darkest hours.
Note years later: the family man divorced and re-married before his youngest son finished school.