Sunbeam

I do not remember how often my parents took me to church on Wednesday nights, but my earliest recollection of learning about international missions was in Sunbeams at Calvary Baptist Church in Greenwood, Mississippi. Sunbeams was a missions education ministry for preschoolers that was replaced in the 1970s with Mission Friends.

The theme song for Sunbeams was “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam.” The song was composed by Nellie Talbot around 1900, and it has been used by several different programs through the years. Cheryl was also a Sunbeam in her church, and she had to remind me of the tune of the old Sunbeam song.

Miss Sproles was the earliest preschool Sunday School teacher that I remember. She was a tiny woman who was hunched over so much that she could not look up. However, it was not necessary for her to look up while working with preschoolers. We could tell how much she loved us and we all looked up to her.

Today my mother is 92 years old, and she too is hunched over like Miss Sproles was. Although my two brothers and I are making decisions for her now, we still look up to our mother out of respect and love. I am grateful to her for helping to form my life by taking me to Sunbeams. I am also grateful that my mother and father instilled in me as a preschooler certain stimuli and responses that have shaped my life: you get ready to eat, you thank God for your food; you go to bed you pray; it is Sunday so we go to church; you get an allowance you give an offering at church.

I am concerned that many parents today don’t realize the bad influence that they have on their preschool children. Afterall, they are just little kids, so how can what I do or say influence them ?!? It bothers me how so many preschoolers are exposed to arguments between their parents. Some parents think nothing about using all kinds of foul language in front of their preschoolers, thinking they are so immature that their language will not affect their young children. How wrong they are! Those preschool years are so formidable in our lives, and too many parents don’t realize what a bad influence they are having on their children, and how it will shape the rest of their lives.

All babies are born culture neutral. We shape their future. As parents and grandparents, we have the responsibility to help mold the minds and hearts of our children and grandchildren to help them become all that God intended them to be when He so wonderfully knitted them in the womb.

“Train up a child in the way that he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 (ESV). I like the old adage: “The acorn does not fall far from the tree.” Help your children and grandchildren know why you make the choices that you make.