4 of our kids have been going to VBS this week.  As a homeschool parent there are very few times when I pull up outside of a building, let my kids out and drive away.  Last night, after I watched them walk inside and waved to our associate pastor who was standing outside, I actually had this thought…
“Do they think I’m just taking advantage of free babysitting?”

Now, I have been one of the volunteers at VBS and I can honestly say I never had that thought. So I am sure that most of the volunteers don’t feel that way. They are there because they want to create a fun, safe place for kids from the community to hear something they may have never heard before and might not ever hear again. That there is a God who loves them and a Savior who died for them.

Not really. At least not in my case. Personally, I don’t remember the VBS at my church. But I do have a strong, clear memory of attending a VBS when I was around 9 or 10. We lived in a really big neighborhood. Well, it was really big to me then, when I’ve driven back through 20 years later the streets somehow have shrunk and the houses of my friends had been squished much closer to my childhood home. I’m not sure how that happens, are you? Anyway, I was friends with a little girl whose family lived a few streets away from mine. They attended one of the biggest churches in my hometown and for some reason had ended up hosting a VBS in their “huge” backyard.

I was invited and spent a few summer nights getting bit by mosquitoes, eating popsicles, playing games, making crafts and I’m sure listening to some Bible stories. I don’t actually remember that part. But what I do remember is that I made this scroll. It wasn’t paper, I’m not sure what material it was on, but someone had painted the verse John 3:16 on except it looked like this: