Becoming the right kind of “tattle tale”
Did you ever have a kid in your class who was known as a tattle tale? A squealer? I went to a Christian school. On the very first day Leslie Kolibaba squealed on me for having my eyes open during prayer. I have wondered for years, how did he know?
As the youngest of 5, I was an easy target. If a mug was broken, fingers waggled my way. Early in life I learned the frightening words “I’m gonna tell.” “Mom! Philip poured maple syrup in the neighbour’s gas tank.”
Our eldest son Steve was a premium grade-A tattle tale. If his brother or sister stepped out of line, we heard about it. In the bathtub one night when he was four, he told his one-year-old brother Jeffery about Jesus. Jeff only knew one word: “Yup.” “Wanna ask Jesus into your heart?” Steve said. “Yup.” 30 seconds later, he was standing in the living room wearing, well, a smile. “Guess what Daddy? Jeffrey asked Jesus into his heart.”
Next, he tried to convert his two-year-old sister. “You have done sins,” he said. “Have not!” she said. He hurled a sesame seed bun at her. Whap! And so, we prayed like crazy.
Ironically, the boy was timid around strangers. Mascots scared him. He was afraid to talk on the phone. But in his early twenties, as he puts it, “I fell in love with Jesus.” And Psalm 78 whapped him: “we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord.”
One day he told me, “I had an incredible encounter at the gym tonight. Three people came in and I really felt God drawing me to one of the ladies.”
“You’re a single guy. I’m surprised.”
He laughed. “She told me of some deep hurt in her life. I asked if she had heard of Jesus. I told her how he died to take her sin and pain away and heal her heart. She prayed and gave her life to Jesus. Her friends are Christians. They said they’d show her through the Bible. She had no idea she’d run into Jesus in a gym.”
God answers prayer. God changes lives. Sometimes I think the only thing that travels faster than light is bad news. But what if we were so excited by the good news that we decided to simply tell others what God has done for us? May God give us the strength and joy to be the right kind of tattle tale today.
