May I Learn to Listen | Mary Roper ‘27
Through the Perkins Fellows I am volunteering with Abundant Life, a nonprofit ministry here in Charlottesville that works with families in the Prospect neighborhood, primarily offering after school tutoring and mentorship programs for youth. I volunteer with their elementary school Bible Club on Friday afternoons, playing outside and then reading a Bible story with the kids and other volunteers.
As I have continued to get to know the kids this year, I have often found myself pondering the different ways we could structure the Bible story we read. How could we tell the stories in a way that helps them grasp more fully how loved they are? How could we lead them to see God at work in their lives? How can we design an activity that serves a wide age range of kids? These are good things to consider, and they come (at least partially) from a part of my heart that desires for the kids I have grown to love to glimpse the love that their Heavenly Father has for them. And yet, in the process of striving for this good thing, I have turned inward and anxious, focusing more on getting the Bible story right than cherishing the kids and reflecting God’s love to them.
Thankfully, the Perkins Fellows readings and the conference we attended with the CCDA (Christian Community Development Association) have consistently pointed me back to the heart of Christian service. As I have been graciously reminded, serving as Jesus calls us to serve requires listening first, meeting people where they are, and, perhaps most pertinent to my failing heart– an understanding that the good work being done is not our work, but that of Someone much greater than us. In the instances when my heart remembers this, God’s work through the little I have to offer becomes all the more evident and the kids around me become all the more precious. My job is not and should not be to get the kids to answer my Bible-y questions right or understand the intricacies of the confusing Old Testament story we are telling them. Rather, I am called to show up with my weary heart, listen to God’s voice calling me into deeper service, and witness his already, ever-abundant work in the children I play and read with.
The role I have to play is that of a listener; may I listen more often and more fully.