Jonah and the Preschoolers

God had called me to do more than just teach my Sunday-school class.
by Hugh Chapman

My friend had been straightforward in his request. "We need you to fill in for Mrs. Weaver's preschooler Sunday-school class while she recovers from her surgery," he said. "But mostly, we need for you to keep an eye on Josh. Can you handle that?"

Of all the children in our church, Josh was the most consistent behavioral problem. He was aggressive, loud, rude, and hard to control. Many of the adults who had once tried to help him had given up. His father had left him only weeks after Josh was born, and his mother had wrestled with personal problems of her own. These days, in fact, he had been placed in the care of his grandmother who had developed the habit of dropping him off each Sunday morning when the church doors opened, then picking him up after the worship service.

Still, I anticipated little trouble and scoffed at the absurdity of my pastor's suggestion. "Kevin, I'm six-foot-one and weigh 220. I'm reasonably intelligent and I bench press 300 pounds. I think I can control a 5-year-old."

Kevin only snickered.

One factor I hadn't counted on was that Josh wouldn't be my only problem. Two of my assigned preschoolers quickly escaped. After several minutes, I rounded them up. Now, standing in the classroom doorway, as I held each wiggley escapee under each arm, I surveyed the carnage. Half-colored cartoon drawings of "Jonah and the Whale" were scattered around the room. A little girl was sitting contentedly at the big table eating paste while two boys wrestled nearby over a broken dump truck. In another area, a kid was throwing broken crayons against a once-white wall, while off in the corner, my assistant, Debi, struggled valiantly to coax a little girl out from behind the piano.

As I entered the room, a quick count revealed only seven children—someone was missing. Suddenly from the edge of the room I heard a frantic pounding. My eighth child had locked himself in the toy closet—again. Josh. I gently lowered the two escapees to the floor and then turned to latch the bottom half of the classroom's Dutch door. Having done that, I hurried to open the closet. Out stepped Josh with a frown. "You need to fix that door, Mr. Huge."

"His name is Mr. Hugh, Josh. Not Mr. Huge," corrected Debi. "You kids settle down now, because Mr. Hugh is about to tell a Bible story!"

I sighed. I was a professional educator. I should have been teaching in a high school with well-behaved college-bound students. Yet there had been no jobs available, so I had instead volunteered to help with one of the youth classes here in church. Though preschool was not what I had in mind, it was the only position they needed help with, and the job should have been a snap. But now, 20 minutes into the task, my head pounded from stress.

As Debi rallied the troops, I whispered a prayer, "Okay, God, I see your point now. Overconfidence is a bad thing. Now, please show me a way out of this mess."

Then taking my place in front of the crowd, I began the lesson. "This is the story of Jonah," I said, in a child-like voice. "Jonah was a man whom God asked to go into Nineveh."

Immediately a joyous shout went up from someone in the crowd. It was Josh again. "Mr. Huge is going to talk about the Nineveh Turtles!" And with that they were all up again, Raphael and Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello, swashbuckling little pizza-scarfing Ninjas doing battle with imaginary swords. I looked Debi. "This isn't going well," I said.

She nodded in agreement. "I guess they just love play time."

It was then that I noticed again the scattered coloring pages on the floor. Picking one up I studied the drawing; it was of Jonah in the boat during a raging storm. Playtime, I said to myself. Suddenly an idea—one surely sent from God—began to formulate. Hurrying back to the coloring table, I slapped my palm three times against the surface. "Okay everybody, hop up into the boat."

The little Ninjas looked to me with newfound curiosity as I patted the table again, this time with cheerful urgency. "Hurry! The boat is about to leave."

Suddenly they scampered onto the table. In a moment they were all aboard, sitting cross-legged and staring attentively in anticipation. Hoping to avoid more trouble, I moved to the end of the table where Josh was settling in. Placing my hands upon his shoulders, I said, "This is Jonah. Jonah is the one whom God told to go into Nineveh and preach to the people there. But do you think he wanted to go?"

The children seemed confused. Some guessed yes but others said no. "He was just like you," I told them. "Ol' Jonah wasn't sure what to do. He wanted to obey God, but he was afraid to go to Nineveh because the people there were all bad, and he was afraid they might hurt him. So instead, Jonah got on this boat headed far away from where God told him to go."

I looked to the kids. "Do you think that was a good thing?"

"Noooo," they sang in unison.

"That's right, because we should always do what God calls us to do," I said. "And when Jonah didn't do what God said, here's what happened." I lifted Josh from the table and put him onto the floor. "Now Jonah, go downstairs, 'below deck' and pretend to take a nap."

The children leaned over the edge of the table and watched as Josh lay on the floor, his eyes tightly closed. Then amid the laughter of the other children, Josh began to snore. I looked to Debi who had begun to laugh, too.

"Do you think God liked what Jonah was doing?" I asked, then quickly answered, "No, he didn't! Because Jonah wasn't doing what God asked. So God caused a big storm to come."

I hurried over to the wall switch and turned the florescent lights quickly on and off, then excitedly I said, "In this storm there was a lot of lightning, and the people on the boat got very scared because the water started splashing up over the edges."

Debi rushed to the sink to run some water and flicked water onto the faces of the children, who ducked and laughed.

"Ohhh," I said grimly, "those people in the boat got more and more frightened, and pretty soon they grabbed up ol' Jonah and said, 'We're all going to drown! And it's all because you're not doing what God told you to do. Now, get into that water and see if th storm stops.'"

I placed my hands under Josh's arms and lifted him high into the air. Then I twirled him around the room, and as I did, I looked deeply into his expression. It was a happy, laughing, loving face, and it made me consider all the horrible things I had heard about him. He was just a child. One who had been abandoned by his father and neglected by his mother. I spun him in a circle, once, twice, then three times until finally I placed him softly near a second table, which was covered with a cloth.

"When Jonah left the boat, the storm finally stopped," I told them. "But God didn't want Jonah to drown, so he caused a big fish to swim up and swallow him!"

I raised a portion of the tablecloth and put it over Josh's head and he quickly scooted farther beneath the table—into the belly of the fish. I then peeked under the cloth and into Josh's laughing face. He shrugged happily, sighed, then whispered in a tiny voice—"I love you, Mr. Huge."

Suddenly, it became clear to me why God had put me here. Josh needed someone to understand him, someone who could throw a football to him, and who could lift him high into the air. He needed a buddy. His mother had probably tried, and perhaps his grandmother too, and the little ladies from his Sunday-school class as well. But today I finally understood—Josh needed something more. He needed me.

Josh and I looked to one another in our newfound friendship. Then, backing away from beneath the table, I turned to the other children, who seemed to wait excitedly for the conclusion of the story. But in my own heart, the important lesson was clear. It's not up to us to choose what tasks we undertake for God; rather, we must learn to trust him. And like Jonah before us, we must learn never to question what we're told.

I turned to the others in an attempt to put closure to the lesson, as I asked, "Boys and girls, do you know what happened next?"

Yet before anyone could answer, to my surprised dismay, Josh leapt from beneath the tablecloth, and with arms raised in triumph he shouted, "The whale barfed me back!"

I sighed. Nobody said teaching was going to be easy.