Article December 2, 2013 ISSUE

My grandsons' 'church work'

Victoria Draper

This article originally appeared on JSH-Online.com as a “Practice, practice, practice” blog.

One day my two young grandsons were visiting, and I had a church lecture meeting to attend. I had no one to leave the boys with, so the solution was to take them with me. We packed up a good “picnic snack” for them and headed to church. I set up the two boys, ages five and six and a half, in the childcare room with plenty of toys to enjoy along with the snack bag. I was close by in another room.

The meeting went on a bit longer than intended, and my grandsons began to venture out into a patio area and brought the toys along with them. “Time to wrap it up,” I thought. We brought the toys back into the playroom, cleaned up the snack crumbs, and started to head home.

It dawned on me: Church work comes in a variety of forms, all of which benefit the spiritual growth of the community.

As we left, our Reading Room librarian said to me, “Be sure to thank the boys for their church work today.” At first I was puzzled by her comment. Then it dawned on me: Church work comes in a variety of forms, all of which benefit the spiritual growth of church members and the larger community. My two grandsons contributed to lecture work that day by playing quietly and respectfully, and by staying in their appropriate place so the committee could focus on selecting a lecturer and a topic. Their “work” that morning was just as important as our work had been.

I was deeply touched by the librarian’s generous inclusion of my grandsons in our church work. It got me thinking about how we might thank children for standing by us in this work. Voicing gratitude helps them to understand from an early age what church is all about.

So on our way to the car, I stopped the boys and thanked them for their church work. I hugged and kissed them and showered them with gratitude. Then, just as we were putting our seat belts on, a fire truck pulled up right in front of us to do the required annual inspection of the church. If I had left a minute earlier, we would have missed the truck. The boys were thrilled. We jumped back out of the car and visited with the firefighters. One generously stayed behind with us, opening all the truck’s compartments and allowing the boys to hold some of the tools. He gave each boy a red plastic firefighter’s helmet.

As we turned to leave, I asked the firefighter if it was his job to stay with the truck while the others did the inspection of our church. He said no; he had stayed behind so he could show the truck to the boys since he felt that was more important that day.

How wonderful that my grandsons, the lecture committee, and I were all blessed by their good church work!

About the author

Victoria Draper lives in San Marcos, California.

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