During last week’s Bible club at the Choi home, I got to teach the Bible lesson, about the end of John 4–the nobleman’s son was sick and dying, so the father walked 20 miles to find Jesus and bring Him back to Capernaum to heal his son. But when he asked Jesus, Jesus just said, “You people will never believe until you see mioracles!” The desperate man kept begging until Jesus said, “Go. Your son will live.” And here’s the amazing part–the Bible says the man “took Jesus at His word and left.” Twenty miles is a five hour walk or a couple-hour horse-back ride–if Jesus didn’t heal the boy, it would be too late by the time the father got home. But he believed Jesus and left. When he got home, his servants met him on the road and told him his son had recovered “at the seventh hour”–the exact moment Jesus had said, “Your son will live.”
Obviously, BELIEF was the key concept when I taught this story to the kids, and since many of them had heard the story before, I had to take dramatic measures to make the story come alive. I wrapped myself up in my big fuzzy white bathrobe, threw a shawl over my head, and told the kids about the amazing miracle that had happened to my family who lives in Capernaum and how we met Yeshua. The kids–who are sometimes bouncing off the walls, picking their noses, or trying to snitch candy–listened with rapt attention as I “galloped” on my imaginary horse for three hours between Capernaum and Cana (where Yeshua was at the time). The conversation derailed slightly when the kids realized I’d never seen a cell phone before and tried to show me theirs, but we got back on track quickly when I knelt before Yeshua, begging Him, “Come save my son!” The kids and I deliberated at length about if I should BELIEVE Yeshua, and why. All on their own, the kids brought up all the points I was going to make sure they thought of–Yeshua is God’s Son. Yeshua keeps His promises. Yeshua can do anything He wants. Yeshua is good.
We talked about problems the kids have these days: betrayal by “BFF’s” (“Best Friend Forever”), dry skin, homework. “What can we do with these problems?” I asked. The response was unanimous–”Ask Jesus for help!” But what does that do? “You keep praying and praying and praying, and He always does what’s best!” the kids explained. To drive home the point about BELIEVING God’s goodness to us, I asked for a volunteer, and then began bragging about my extraordinary powers of egg juggling. However, in the process of demonstrating these powers, I dropped an egg, which broke all over my coworkers’ floor. (The kids yelled, “Oooooooooh! You’re gonna get it!” Fortunately, my gracious coworkers had already given me permission to do this.) “All you have to do,” I continued, “is stand there while someone throws an egg at you and I catch it! I promise–oops! [I dropped another egg on the floor] not to let the egg make a mess on your clothes.” My volunteer took a step back, but bravely waited–until I put a blindfold over my eyes. “I promise not to let any egg make a mess on your clothes. Do you BELIEVE me?” He didn’t answer. As I stumbled over to stand between my volunteer and Jong Dae Choi (his father, who was going to throw the egg), I heard the other kids yelling, “I want to throw it!” They must have figured they had a defenseless target, especially when I ended up facing the wrong direction, away from Jong Dae. After that was all sorted out, I proclaimed myself ready–Jong Dae cocked back his arm–I jumped up and down, clawing the air and shrieking–he threw the egg–it bounced off my volunteer’s chest and rolled along the floor. HARD BOILED!!! After the kids had stopped arguing about who got to eat the hard boiled egg, I turned to my volunteer. “Thank you for BELIEVING me even when it didn’t look like I could keep my promise,” I told him.
As hilariously fun as all this was, it made me stop and think–how often do I as an adult believe God and stand still, waiting for Him to intervene, even when it looks like I’m going to get plastered by raw, even rotten, egg situations? Maybe the kids weren’t the only ones who needed that lesson in belief.
