(The story and activity below come from Stef, the children’s publication of SDOK, a ministry that is part of The Voice of the Martyrs’ family of missions. The fictional story is told from the point of view of a boy named Stef in the Netherlands, where SDOK is located. It has been translated, edited, and condensed for clarity.)
Alarm
On a rainy Sunday morning, I walked home from the church with my parents and sister. “What person let his cell phone alarm go off this morning during the prayer?” I asked my father. My father laughed. “I think I know. My friend Henk’s alarm goes off every day at 10:02 a.m. He prays at two minutes past 10 for helpers in the Kingdom of God. It says in the Bible in Luke 10:2 that we must pray for this. So Henk does that. Every day.”
Hmm, I think it’s beautiful. But I think he should turn it off when we are praying in church. “Oh well … we all forget things sometimes,” my father said. In the meantime we were standing at the front door and my father was looking nervously in his pockets – and he has quite a few pockets. “You forgot your key again!” my sister and I called at the same time. We stood there in the pouring rain in front of a closed door. My mother also had no key with her, and the neighbors were not at home. Eventually we got a ladder, and I squeezed myself in through the bathroom window.
Then I got an idea. “May I look up a Bible text on your phone?” I asked my dad. My father was not hard to convince. Maybe he felt a bit guilty for the forgotten key. I searched the Bible and then set my father’s alarm. The next morning my father was fixing my breakfast.
“Did you set my alarm clock at 3:25 am, Stef?” he asked. “What a ridiculous time! How does that make sense?”
I answered, “Because in Judges 3:25, the word key is written. I thought it was a handy tip from Henk.” My mother laughed, and my father walked out the front door frowning. Then he came in the back door. He had forgotten his key!
Challenge
Luke 10:2: And he [Jesus] said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
You can participate in the Luke 10:2 challenge! People all over the world stop doing what they are doing at two minutes past 10 in the morning. At school children stop calculating, people stop typing at the office, others put away the newspaper, and the crane is stopped for a moment on the construction site. Not everyone of course, just Christians. They long for more workers in God’s Kingdom.
There are so many people who have not yet heard about God. We need people to tell them that salvation is possible through the Lord Jesus! Wouldn’t it be cool if more people heard about God’s love? Maybe you want to pray, too!
(Source: Stef, the children’s publication of SDOK)
