The longer I walk with God—and I've walked with him for almost forty years—the more I realize that what I learned in Sunday School as a child is everything I've truly needed to know!
I learned two things in Sunday School. First, that Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so, which may be the most profound statement ever made. The second is that the answer to everything is Jesus.
I'm old enough to remember the flannel boards—remember those? Teachers would tell a Bible story with the paper characters and props, then ask questions. If I didn't know the answer was Jesus for sure, I knew quite well that I could at least try that answer and it had a high chance of being the right one. Who fed the 5,000? Jesus! Who healed the blind man? Jesus! Who raised Lazarus from the dead? Jesus! Who died on the cross and rose from the grave? Jesus! Little did I know that what might have been a result of a lack of preparation on the teacher's part would end up as preparation to be counter-culture.
The truth really is simple: the answer for everything we encounter is found in Jesus Christ.
Later, when I read (and re-read) the Chronicles of Narnia, this simple truth was reinforced, changing the way I saw life around me, history, and the Bible. The main thing I took away from the series was that if the characters in the books acted without looking first for Aslan, unnecessary wars were fought and people died. Nothing ever good came out of acting without waiting for Aslan. Aslan, of course, is a thinly veiled allegory for Jesus Christ because Aslan creates the world, calls the sentient beings to himself for relationship, and eventually gives himself in death to save Narnia from the sin that entered it through a human. (As I said, thinly veiled.)
Because of this early training, as I read the Old Testament I look for Christ and find Him in the most surprising places. He was in the wilderness talking to Hagar. He was in Moses' burning bush. He was in the pillar of fire that led the Israelites out of Egypt to cross the Red Sea on dry ground then later moved between the Israelites and Pharaoh's pursuing army. He is there, calling Gideon a warrior long before he fought his first battle. In so many stories, we find the revealed Christ relating to us centuries later.
To excite this same passion in my children for the Bible and the Christ revealed in it, I'm passing this training on. Each evening, I'm reading the Narnia series to my eight-year-old son, Josiah. And I'm pleased that the most electrifying words of the series—the ones that still reverberate in my own soul—are the ones he's latched onto. He repeats to himself, "Aslan is on the move!"
Words like these create a responsive rumble inside me as we live through outbreaks of God's spirit—possibly leading to the Great Revival that has been prophesied my entire life! God is on the move!
In all the stories of the Old and New Testament, we find Jesus Christ on the move. We find him in our own stories, hidden perhaps like a parent hides from their child—not so well they can't be found but well enough that we experience great joy when we find him!
So, we must train our hearts and eyes to look for—and find—Christ who is on the move.
Grace is always on the move.