The Perfect Sunday School Lesson

He steps into the empty classroom, eyeing about with a satisfied smile.

The seats, still unoccupied, stand quietly in a semi-circle. A remarkably clean whiteboard watches over them, the way all self-respecting whiteboards do.

His mind outlines, once again, the ice breaker that'll set off the lesson. Seems fine. The children will laugh and chatter excitedly, asking for another round, and another, then another. Unless someone breaks something.

The lesson? Leads perfectly well from the ice breaker. A thought-provoking question or two, and the children will be eating out of their teacher's hands.

He sees it now: The children will listen wide-eyed, open-eared. Their curious minds will try understand everything they can, even pop a question or two. When the bell rings, they'll shut their eyes, clasp their hands and pray dearly. Heck, maybe the Memory Verse will be more Verse than Memory.

"Ah, yes," He whispers. "It'll be the perfect Sunday School lesson."

*****

Here now, the moment of truth: The children trudge into their seats, mostly wishing they were home being serenaded by the Cartoon Hour.

Icebreaker time. Brrrrrr. The ice is mighty thick today. Try as the teacher might, the children are simply in no mood for childish games. What utter irony.

Embarassingly, the teacher ends up playing more than the children do. Can't blame him, it was the only way to eat up ten minutes.

"Can anyone tell me the purpose of the game?" he next throws his million-dollar question.

Splat. It flops so spectacularly, the Russian Olympic gymnastics team would've blushed.

"Erm...okay, why did we play the game?"

Not a hoot.

"Was anyone even paying attention?"

The children sense exasperation, though they don't actually know what the word means.

Things go downhill for the next quarter-to-hour. More times than he remembers, the teacher wishes the ground would swallow him up. Awkward silences pepper the session like a first-time cook with Ajinomoto.

Whoops! The teacher gets stuck mid-sentence again. Already the children are yawning and whispering among themselves. Slowly but surely, he is losing them.

Ring! Goes the bell. The disinterested children pray along, and jot down the Memory Verse to memorise next week. The class empties out.

Sigh, goes the teacher. I wonder what went wrong. It all seemed so perfect.

Guess I should try harder, pray harder next time. It'll be better.

*****

Beaming warmly in the way only He can, He gazes at the teacher switching off the lights.

Indeed, it was the perfect Sunday School lesson.