The click of swords and bandaids

Yesterday at church I filled in for the 4th/5th grade small group teacher, and as usual, the kids probably taught me more than I taught them.

I didn't have my usual patience, and there was one boy in particular who I was really struggling to engage with patiently.

Our lesson was on self-control, specifically controlling your words, and this particular boy initially found the sword of hurting words much more appealing than the boring bandaids of healing words (who's idea was it to use a sword as an example of a bad thing with 5th grade boys?), and found each example of hurtful words  much more amusing than their opposite (mainly because he got to use such forbidden words in church of all places).

Then somewhere in the lesson, there was an obvious change in him; even his physical demeanor changed as he stopped his fidgeting for just a moment to comment: "Wait.  Maybe I really do need to change my words and be more careful of what I say."

Click!  Something within him allowed the boy to see past the distractions of the illustration to see God's truth. After seemingly missing the entire lesson, it's message clicked inside him and immediately resulted in change.  And this teacher couldn't have been more relieved.

I wonder how often God feels that same relief when dealing with us: He's constantly empowering us with our truth, and yet we habitually struggle to accept it; just like this boy, we miss His messages because of the distraction and draw of the things of this world; we get caught up in the flash of swords that we miss His truth.  And yet He patiently and graciously continues to teach us, continues to fill our lives with opportunities to know Him more, to know the truth of His creation and its purposes, until we move our attention from the draw of earthly swords to the sword of the Spirit.