A First Reader I knew read everything with total attention to the meaning of the words, including the announcements repeated each week. The regular notice about Sunday School, for example, always caught my attention because the Reader emphasized the last word instead of the first: "Sunday School." It made me really think about the fact that we have a school on Sundays for young people—not just an institutional hour required for pupils up to the age of twenty but genuine learning—schooling in spiritual things.
But Sunday School isn't just preparatory or pre-life, so to speak. What is happening in Sunday School is as significant as everything else in church. The pupils and teachers during that hour are living in the midst of their relationship to Christ, Truth, not merely reading or talking about it.
One Easter morning many years ago, I was thinking about the class I was going to teach in Sunday School. Apparently, a feeling of mere dutifulness had crept in, and I didn't feel much inspiration. But I kept praying. I found myself thinking about a very moving scene from the novel The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevski. Several schoolboys are gathered around Alyosha, the spiritually-minded brother. They ask if it can be true what's taught in religion that we shall all live and see each other again after death. With illumined conviction, Alyosha says, "Certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!"
