This summer I taught 1st and 2nd grade at our Vacation Bible School and it was another amazing year. I  thoroughly appreciated the metaphor of my students as Olympians in the Race of Life. As usual in a teaching role, it seemed that I was the one who did the most learning!  

Towards the end of the week our Race of Life became the Race of Faith. We learned about the path to faith and then we moved on to study life as a believer or "member of God's team."  We used a picture of a pathway leading to Heaven to illustrate the lesson. On the pathway were various obstacles, rocks on the path with the word greed on them, a tree branch across the way with the word pride on it, a rickety old bridge of fear and a dark cave of peer pressure.  Along the path could be found a river of peace, a tree of joy and various verses corresponding to contentment, humility, courage and Godliness. Also along the path was a fountain representing the Bible and the word church inscribed on a bench.

In class we talked about the blessings God gives us. The children seemed to fully understand that God gives them many blessings including church, a place for fellowship and rest and His word found in the Bible. We discussed how God gives us peace and joy and we even related how sometimes we neglect to take advantage of His blessings. It was later that I realized that we often neglect to exhort one another to be the blessing.

We so quickly look to the church to be our bench, to fulfill our needs, to be the place where we find encouragement, rest and renewal. However, God desires us to do so much more than look for a bench, He also desires for us to be the bench. Not only do we run in the race of faith, we also are the fans on the sidelines cheering and encouraging the other runners (1 Thess 5:11); praying for fellow believers (James 5:16). We are the supporters providing fresh water to the runners, sharing God's word and loving them (John 13:34). We are the bench that bears one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2) and the bench that rejoices with those who rejoice and weeps with those who weep (Romans 12:15).

We frequently get so caught up in our own race of faith that we forget that God is calling each of us to be used in others' lives. Sometimes an integral part of our own race is the opportunity to be another believer's bench.

As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. 1 Peter 4:10