Aboard the night train in early December of last year, one of us mentioned how reading ‘Spiritual Leadership’ by J. Oswald Sanders is a guilt trip. One reads about the “essential qualities” and habits of a leader, only to one by one recognize them as lacking in his/her own life (save for, as someone gleefully pointed out, that chapter called ‘the leader and reading’).
‘Celebration of Discipline’ may or may not be less of a guilt trip. For me, just thinking about the book brings to mind the different spiritual disciplines listed and discussed therein, and inevitably, how undisciplined I am.
One realization that’s struck me some weeks back is how it doesn’t have to take some distinguished volume off the Christian racks to stir up, rouse, motivate me about the disciplines. I’ve discovered something else that hasn’t failed to do the job just as, if not even more, effectively.
Although my duty is craft, I do join the singing (and much of the storytelling) session at my Sunday school class. A current favorite with the kids (preschoolers) is the “two house” song:
The wise man built his house upon the rock, (x3)
And the rains came tumbling down.
The rains came down and the floods came up, (x3)
And the house on the rock stood firm.
The foolish man built his house upon the sand, (x3)
And the rains came tumbling down.
The rains came down and the floods came up, (x3)
And the house on the sand went smash!
The kids would answer in unison that they want to be the wise man and not the foolish man. Little do they know that the cheh cheh standing (kneeling, actually. I like to come down to their height.) next to them cannot answer the same as confidently and enthusiastically. As my partner teacher starts flipping to the next song, I’d be left wondering just how much of my house is on rock and how much is on sand. It wasn’t like this when I was their age.
Then there’s this other, more straightforward, song:
Read your Bible, pray everyday,
Pray everyday, pray everyday.
Read your Bible, pray everyday,
You will grow, grow, grow. (x3)
Read your Bible, pray everyday,
You will grow, grow, grow!
Don’t read your Bible, forget to pray,
Forget to pray, forget to pray.
Don’t read your Bible, forget to pray,
You will shrink, shrink, shrink. (x3)
Don’t read your Bible, forget to pray,
You will shrink, shrink, shrink!
Ooh. Ouch… It wasn’t like this when I was their age.
Just goes to show that, Sunday school songs can and do speak to me even after I’ve ‘outgrown’ them. Learning is a lifelong process!
3 comments:
Y'know.. sometimes I feel everything is a guilt trip for me.
But I think as a child I never was really that serious about anything I sang at church. The words were just.. words. Only later did I actually begin to ponder over what I was mouthing every Sunday.
We may not have thought deeply about the songs that we sang while we were kids, but the (basic) truth was clear to us, I believe - at least while we were singing them. Sure we often didn't remember what we sang, but is that really different from now?
"Sure we often didn't remember what we sang, but is that really different from now?"
Nope, not really different. But these Sunday School songs I've been singing week in, week out for a few months (kids songs not as much variety..), and some have struck me so. So I remember them (relatively) better.
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