What Are You Going to Do About it?

In the third grade I had a class bully. He was the typical threaten and beat up the little guy kind of bully who waited till there were no adults around to take advantage. His bullying would take place at recess, you know the one places in elementary school were kids should be able to enjoy themselves. During recess he would come up to our kickball game and take our ball away. When we would ask for it back he would say in a threatening way, “What are you going to do about it?” We tried to tell our third grade teacher, Mrs. Fran, but she saw our bully as a sweet kid who just wanted to play. We had invited him to play several times, but he seemed to enjoy picking on us more than playing kickball. This would happened so often that we would plan to have a back up ball or even stop our game to keep the ball away from him. Until one day someone finally took a stand.

I remember this almost like it happened yesterday. We had just started playing a game of kickball when the ball got away and rolled up to the class bully. With a grin on his face he picked up the ball and began bouncing it as he walked away. A friend of mine, named Scott, clearly had enough of it, so he went up to the class bully and demanded he give us the ball back. The bully responded as usual and said, “What are you going to do about it?” Scott, half the bully’s size, just stood there with an angry look on his face and said nothing. The bully chuckled at that. Then a few seconds later another classmate stood next to Scott and then another, until we were all standing there showing our bully we were not afraid. The bully stopped chuckling, got angry himself and in a moment chunked the ball at Scott’s face knocking him to the ground. Scott hit the ground hard and sat there with a red face, partially from being angry and also having had a playground ball slammed into his face. Unfortunately for our bully no one seemed scared by this and Scott picked himself up and just stood there once again. Just as our bully was about to grab the ball a second time to possibly throw it at another one of us, Mrs. Fran grabbed our bully by the shoulder and told him she saw the whole thing.

I don’t remember everything that happened after that but I do remember that we played kickball the rest of the school year without worrying about our ball being taken away. To this day I don’t know why our bully acted the way he did. Maybe he felt like we wouldn’t let him play with us or maybe he just enjoyed picking on smaller kids more than playing games, I don’t know. But what I do know and remember that day is the power that comes from someone taking a stand and deciding to do something.

There is a lot of brokenness in our world and according to scripture (Isaiah 61:1-2) we have been anointed to do something about it. What does that mean to be anointed? Well, it means that God has chosen us to do something. Through Jesus Christ we have been chosen! Join us this Sunday, September 11th, for a new sermon series called, “Do Something” where we will explore not only what we are supposed to be doing but also how we can do it.

In God’s grip,

Pastor Chuck Church