An Unexpected (Welcome!) Moment

“Do you think going to the altar is scary?”  I asked my students one Wednesday morning as we were preparing for revival.

“I don’t like people watching me.  It makes me nervous,” one of the boys volunteered.

“I feel better when I go to the altar!” said another.

One girl just stared at me and shook her head, wide-eyed.

My favorite response was from one of my first-grade boys.  “Going to the altar isn’t scary because when Jesus meets me there, I feel safe.”  My heart melted at that one.

But one boy raised his hand.  “Miss Kruse, what is an altar?”

He genuinely had no idea.  So I lined the classroom up and we took a field trip over to the church.  I had them all sit on the front pew of the church and we talked about why we go to the altar.  “How are you supposed to kneel at it?” The child asked.  I explained that it didn’t matter how you knelt, as long as you were there with an attitude of being willing to obey Jesus.  

When we were done talking, I began to call my students into line to go back to class.  But one child burst out, “Oh, Miss Kruse!  Can we please pray there now altogether?”

And so we did.  I wish I had a picture of it.  I was sitting on the steps facing them, and they flocked to the altars on either side of me.  Their heads bowed, hands clasped, and eyes tightly shut, my students asked Jesus to help them to obey Him. 

That little boy now knows what an altar is.  May Jesus help him to always find it to be a place of refuge and peace.

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