Vacation Bible School and the Wrath of God

This week is Vacation Bible School at our place.

I believe VBS is God's punishment on adults for their unconfessed sins of childhood. It is Baptist purgatory--if you will. I once did six Bible Schools in six weeks. I was a wicked, wicked child--apparently!

In the 58 years I have lived, at least 45 of those have been spent in some form of Vacation Bible School. The first 12 were as a student. It was so much fun going to two week VBSs that Mom took us to two a summer. That covered one month of boredom. Then when I got older, I was "mature" (looking back, the word was stupid)enough to help in VBS, because volunteers were catching on and dropping out like flies. No bother, energetic youth were in ready supply so VBS could go on forever-- or it just felt like that.

Now we have today and our modern incarnation of Vacation Bible School. Things have really changed. Ours is four days long. It takes the rest of the summer to get the building back in shape after four days of hellions( I mean little children eagerly wanting to learn about Jesus)in the building. And that doesn't count the damage done by the children who never grew up--usually assigned to the recreation team(shortened to Rec) for a reason. Last night the Rec crew brought water pistols to church for the activity part of the children's time outside. I just hid in a closet until 10:00 p.m. It is not that I have a deadly fear of water pistols or of guns in general, it is just that careless watering ruins my hair.

I was actually assigned the rather harmless task this year of accompanying the bus driver as we picked up kids. This is a rather benign work, unless you back over one of them, then well, you figure out what happens after that.

We had a small bus, actually a Suburban, which I don't even want to think about how much it costs to get this monster up to cruising speed. We made two trips. The first stop was five children, one of which was caught in the act of doing something with mud. I was not too alarmed about him crawling in the car since it was not my car or my child. We just brought him as he was. I knew his teachers would correct anything amiss. Sure enough when we took him home, he was only half as muddy but twice as wet, and the door prize for being good in the bus was another water pistol.

Over the years, VBS has become shorter and shorter, and the cookies have gone from being all home made to mostly store bought. The interesting thing is the children prefer that. Years ago, when we hauled out the cookies at refreshment time, the homemake cookies were examined like one would look at a cow patty. In the eyes of the child you could see, "I ain't putting this thing in my mouth, what are you trying to do, poison me!" Of course, that would seriously damage our averages, so we were not about to do that. However, they did not know that, so they reached over cookies to die for and took the store bought cookies. Looking back I can see a lot of where my extra weight came from as the years rocked on.

But, it worked out well: the children ate the store bought cookies, and the adults (already larger than life size) feasted on the homemake cookies. The cookie makers never knew the difference. It really was quite the racket, now that I think about it. No adult would ever bake cookies just because you asked them too, but for VBS, nothing was too good.

So, back to now and we are down to two nights. That is one of the other big changes. All morning schools have gone to night schools, because we are raising a smarter group of teens and they aren't buying what we are selling. Rather immune to guilt at the adolescent age, we have had to revert to the pool of adults who could be goaded into doing this for their children and their church and bringing cookies to boot.

So, I am back running the bus as shotgun. Since our theme is the old Wild West, it is appropriate that I should have this position because I don't want anyone kidnapping these precious little darlings all covered with chocolate, tempera paint, chalk, mud, and water. However, I have noticed each evening that some parents are not happy that we have delivered their children back safe and sound. I get the feeling that some parents hope we would lose their children in the shuffle. But, they can rest assured, these are the very children that will be returned safely home.

I do remember the mother(several years ago) that left her kid at Vacation Bible School until we were thinking about calling the police. It was an hour after Bible School was over, no address, no phone number, and the little bundle of joy could not remember her last name or where she lived. Being the cynic that I am, I began to suspect a plot to dump this child on the one group of people who might just not bring her home. WRONG PEOPLE!! Whether it was remorse, or thinking about consequences, or the boyfriend left, she showed up and we learned a valuable lesson. No child was ever dropped off again without a last name, a working phone number of someone on the planet, an address, finger prints, and a gentle reminder of when VBS is over. It didn't hurt that in bold bright neon shiny lights was the CPS hotline number over the registration table and an old grouch standing poised with a phone in his hand ready to dial the magic number. We usually recruited our crankiest member who didn't see the need for such foolishness in the first place, and in the second place in his day they did all this without air conditioning using two sticks and one apple between them.

This year we tried something new. We have a VBS band. Now I know that electric guitars, drums, and screaming voices sound a little unlike the wild west, but it beats shooting up the place and chasing Miss Kitty.

The VBS band is leading worship Sunday. I will be in Taiwan. I sure I can hear them from there!