Come with me to a third grade classroom…
There is a nine-year old boy sitting at his desk and all of a sudden, there is a puddle
between his feet and the front of his pants are wet. He thinks his heart is going to stop because he
cannot possibly imagine how this has happened. It’s never happened before, and he knows that
when the boys find out he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they’ll never
speak to him again as long as he lives.
The boy believes his heart is going to stop; he puts his head down and prays this prayer,
“Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes from now I’m dead meat!” He
looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher with a look in her eyes that says he has been
discovered.
As the teacher is walking toward him, a classmate named Susie is carrying a goldfish
bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl
of water in the boy’s lap. The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself,
“Thank you, Lord!”
Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is the object of
sympathy. The teacher rushes him downstairs and gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants
dry out. All the other children are on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk. The
sympathy is wonderful. But as life would have it, the ridicule that would have been his has been
transferred to someone else – Susie. (Remind you of anyone)? She tries to help, but they tell her
to get out. “You’ve done enough, you klutz”!
Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, the boy walks over to Susie
and whispers, “You did that on purpose, didn’t you”? Susie whispers back, “I wet my pants once
too”.
May God help us see the opportunities that are always around us and use them to do
good. “To him who knows to do good…”(James 4:17).

~ Laura Brock; Liberty church of Christ