Sunday Funnies

This was written a couple of weeks ago...

Sunday mornings these past couple of months have been wonderful, because I get to sit through the entire church service.

The day begins when we arrive at church and go straight to Sunday School with our youth group teens.

Judah usually comes in there with us, as our smaller congregation has found it hard to keep find Little Tots workers for the Sunday School hour.

It's not often we make it all the way through the hour. Judah has the attention span of...well, a 3 1/2 year old boy, and tends to get really squirrelly after sugary treats like donuts and juice.

Those well-intentioned folks that brave working the Little Tot's class, for whatever reason, usually only last a few weeks.

I think this is because of the fact that Judah the three boys currently in that class are, together, a real handful. Yes, Judah and the twins are a force to be reckoned with.

Recently, my friend (the twins’ mother) had brought to church with them a toy motorcycle that Judah had left at their home the previous Sunday.

This toy is roughly the size of motorcycle Barbie would ride if she had a street racing bike. (Or does she? She's come a long way since the days of the fancy pink RV I used to play Barbies with at my friends house as a girl.)

This is one of those toys that has obnoxiously loud sound effects which I have elected never to buy for my own children, but am tortured with annoyed by on a regular basis anyway thanks to an uncle who thinks our boys need the noisiest toys on the market.

It's one of those toys which I loathe and feel like chucking off a twenty story building usually disable the sound effects for by removing the batteries, but somehow kept forgetting to do so. I think that is because it involves finding a Phillips screwdriver to open the battery case on the bottom, and me going to our garage to find a tool would be akin to asking Jeff to find me some scrapbooking eyelets in my craft room. A wild goose chase.

Which is the very reason it’s one of Judah’s favorite toys...because with him, the louder the better.

This is probably also why the twins mother wanted to return it to us so badly enjoyed playing with it so much during the week it was at their home.

Because of the fact there was no Little Tots class, the twin brothers were sitting with their mom and their visiting aunt in one of the adult Sunday School classes. Which happened to be held in the sanctuary. They were in the front pew.

The motorcycle was in with their mom’s stuff, and one of the brothers just couldn’t resist pushing the button on top of it.

And into the middle of the Sunday School lesson, the toy belts out, “I FEEL THE NEED FOR SPEED…LET’S RIIIIIDE!” complete with very loud music and the revving sounds of a motor. And it doesn't stop for a long, long, too-embarrassingly-long time.

Which was probably about the time she promptly rose and ushered the boy back to the Little Tots classroom where I was hanging out with Judah waiting until the teen girls arrived to take over for the Service.

Yes, a few months ago someone finally came up with the brilliant idea (read: they’d run out of other options) to ask a couple of the teen girls at church if they would like to work in the nursery during the service, and wonder of wonders they agreed to do so! For the first time in ages, I’ve been able to sit through worship without distractions.

So anyway, later that same morning, while listening intently to the sermon, I saw my friend (the twins mom) walk past and suddenly recalled the story of the toy motorcycle she'd told me just before the sermon began.

Which triggered the thought that my cell phone ringtone was not yet set on vibrate after a busy day out and about on Saturday. Which meant, of course, that I had to tend to that promptly and so reached over to rustle it out of my purse.

This is because my dad someone in my life has a real knack for calling at the most inopportune moments.

In doing so, I glanced at the time and discovered that we were just a couple of minutes from the end of the sermon.

I turned my attention back to the sermon, and became so engrossed that I didn’t realize we’d gone a few minutes over the usual ending time.

That is...until I heard a loud banging on the two-way mirror between the nursery and the sanctuary.

How distracting, I thought, then glanced back, and from my angle could barely make out the silhouetted ouline of one very familiar little head, cocked just so, and the faint, somewhat muffled sound of his gleeful shout behind the glass, “Hey, dere’s my mama and daddy!”

Clearly the boy was proud of himself for spotting us his parents and slapped the glass a few more times before he was bodily removed from the chair he’d somehow managed to push up to the two-way glass.

Yes, because stealing toys from the church nursery, running up and down the aisles during the middle of a sermon and then flipping the bank of light switches for the sanctuary off and on during another service were simply not enough, he had to add yet another incident to his record.
This kid is making a real name for himself in our church, let me tell you.