Every Child Is Precious

It was a beautiful spring day with a promise of new life and flowers. Out in the sunshine children were playing while mothers were cleaning their homes and sweeping the sidewalks. Some of the children were on their way to attend Bible class, a class we held each week for children who attended neither church nor Sunday school; and on the way they played, skipped, and chased each other as children do. Then suddenly one of the boys dashed across the street. Not even the warning screams nor the squealing tires were able to avert the tragedy. The boy was hit and fell unconscious to the pavement , moments later his life was gone.

News of the accident spread like a brush fire, but those of us who taught at the Bible class were especially stricken. We had had him about one year , one year to teach him about the love of God , one year to teach him about salvation. He didn’t always come, and sometimes we were glad he wasn’t there. When he was there he didn’t sit still and didn’t listen. He squirmed and wriggled, pulled girls’ hair and moved their chairs. He was a genius at testing our abilities to handle discipline problems. Yet to our surprise at the end of the lesson he invariably knew the answers. We knew little about the results of our teaching , only that to one of his teachers he confided that he prayed his prayer at night after he hid himself under the blankets.

I went to see him in the funeral home. His bruised body was neatly dressed; a small Bible had been placed in his hands. It occurred to me that he looked like a little saint; but as I looked at him, all the frustrations of evangelism work welled up in me. We could not report any great success stories, no great crowds. We had to compete with ball games, movies, shopping trips and birthday parties. Only hard work with oodlles of disappointments. But we loved these children; and because we ourselves had been blessed with Christian homes and a great Saviour, we determined to keep going knowing that no one else might prepare these children for eternity I wondered now would we have tried harder, had we known how short our time was to be?

It was a damp, dreary day when the casket was entrusted to the ground. One burning question come to my mind; where is our boy may we believe he is with the Lord? We came home with a new sense or urgency. There is work to be done while it is day; our days are often much shorter than we realize. Yet we are surrounded by promises: Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap; they that sow in tears shall reap with joy; and My Word shall not return void.

With permission from The Trumpet, published for the Federation of Orthodox Reformed Churches in North America, February 2006.
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