Article December 16, 2013 Issue

'Leave the angel on the table'

Toni Turpen

In the common category of “the students in Sunday School will often teach you more than you could possibly teach them,” I wanted to share this story.

Last year I was substituting for one of the very young classes, and since it was almost Christmas, I brought along some small wooden folk-art characters from a nativity set with the plan that we would talk about the Christmas story. It turned out that there was one student, a little boy, in the class that day.

Together we sat at a small table: me with the characters piled in my lap—him excited for a Bible story. In an acting-it-out way, I began with the angel visiting Mary. I brought the angel Gabriel up onto the table and explained God is always with us, but sometimes when we hear His messages, we call them “angels” (see Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 581). And I told my student this angel thought spoke to Mary. Then I had the angel making an exit, back to the pile in my lap.

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