Sword Fighting at church

He sat down and would not move. I asked him again which of the life groups in the room he wanted to join. He turned his face away from me. “Look,” I said (pointing), “do you want to join this group or that group over there?” No movement. Just silence. “Dude, please look at me. Which group should we join?” *crickets* “Okay, what do you want to do?” More looking away and silence but this time he added an eye roll. Instead of drop kicking him, I took a deep breath and tried to exhale all my frustration.

Because I know violence is never the solution, I resorted to praying. “What should I do, Lord? This isn’t working at all.” Then God opened my eyes to the fact that a routine had not been established yet so he didn’t know what the schedule was or what to expect next. He was struggling with all the changes and needed some control. The thought occurred to me that if he wanted to sit in silence then maybe I should stop talking. I let out another sigh and said, “I get it, we can sit here and not talk. That’s okay.” I got out of his face and just sat next to him while we both processed the situation.

A minute, that felt like 10, passed and he whispered something. I turned and said, “What’d you say?” A smirk formed on his lips as he raised his voice about half a decibel and whispered again. “I can’t hear you,” I said, “If you want me to hear you then you need to talk louder.” Cue more silence. The smirk got bigger though. Finally, he said (at an audible volume) “Ball?” “Oh no”, I said, “we can’t play with the ball in here during life group time.” At this point I had released the whole forcing him into a life group idea. I saw the foam swords we had used for an earlier game and I instantly knew what we were going to do. “Hey, you wanna go outside and have a sword fight?” His face brightened and suddenly there was eye contact and clear speech. “YES!”, he exclaimed.

I grabbed the swords and off we went battling all over the courtyard, across the playground, and up and down the slide. When the sword struck it made a very satisfying “Fwap!” causing both of us to laugh hysterically. It was an epic contest that looked slightly uneven when he got a few strong loud fwaps in on both sides of my head. But, believe me, I got quite a few jabs in myself. When life groups were over, we calmly went back inside and played ball with everyone else.

I want so much to teach him about Jesus but end up feeling like a failure more often than not. Then God reminds me of the lesson He teaches me every week. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, PATIENCE, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and SELF-CONTROL. And once again, the student becomes my teacher. Sometimes the answer to WWJD is: have a sword fight.