The Pink Podium

My son built it for my granddaughter when she was teaching a children’s Sunday School class.  When she went off to Bible college, it was passed to my daughter in Junior High Girls Sunday School class. 

It doesn’t always stay there, though.  This photo was taken May 7 at our Mother Daughter Banquet and was used by our speaker.  How I wish there were a recorder in that podium – it has heard so many good lessons over the years that if they were played back the whole Bible would have been used as examples.

Does that sound odd when thinking of Paul’s admonition:

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. (1 Corinthians 14:34-35 KJV)

Is the following a contradiction?

The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded. In all things shewing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, (Titus 2:3-7 KJV)

Keep silence, or teach?  We do both.  I keep silent until I can discuss with my own husband differences I have with what we’ve heard in church.  He is the head of our household.  The one I should turn to first with questions.  It is his responsibility to provide, too, also laid out in Ephesians’ fifth chapter. 

It is, however, a woman’s responsibility to teach in the church, and what we are to teach has been laid out in Titus 2.

Thus, the pink podium.  The women who stand behind that podium – and any other – have great responsibility when it comes to teaching.  It must be biblically based, doctrinally valid and designed for Christian growth.

This teaching begins at home, as it did with Lois and moved forward by generation:

When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.  (2 Timothy 1:5 KJV)

Our pastor spoke of a time when his mother felt she was a failure because that faithfulness was not shown in a child of hers.  The failure was the child’s not the mother’s.  There comes a time of accountability when the choice is made by the child, when the parent cannot do more than pray and exhort.

Let us do both of those consistently and well.  Praying for those who do teach our children and exhorting our children as they learn.