Verse 13 10 July 2006
I sat in the back at Sunday School, and as the teacher started, I could feel my mind immediately start drifting from the lesson. Sometimes I have a hard time paying attention, but I did want to get something spiritual out of that time, so I opened my bible to read in Jeremiah.
A bit later I guess the teacher asked a few rows in front of me to start reading out loud one verse per person, snaking back and forth down the rows, until the long passage she wanted to discuss had been read aloud. I barely had time to notice this fact before it was suddenly my “turn” and the girl in front of me turns around signaling for me to read. Whaaaa?? “I don’t know where we are,” I whisper desperately…she generously holds up her own bible and points “verse 13”…and I think well, that helps…there’s only one verse thirteen in THE WHOLE BIBLE!
I scramble and quickly recall that the teacher had started talking about Solomon at the beginning of the lesson…but by now the whole class is staring at “the girl who’s frantically flipping pages in her bible and can’t seem to find verse 13.”… the helpful girl takes a bit more pity on me and whispers “chapter 11”…hmm…I think…now we’re narrowing things down a bit…but I whisper “I don’t know where we are” again, because…well, what else is there to say?
I’m flipping through Samuel trying to remember exactly where the stuff about Solomon is at, so I can try to track down that elusive verse 13…and it’s not working very well…and now that I’m totally flustered Ms. Assistance finally lays out The Big Clue as she notices I’m not even close to the right place “We’re in Kings…”….oh. Thanks.
Except now I’m so discombobulated that I can’t find Kings to save my life—before or after Samuel?, but the pages are sticking and my fingers and flying but not finding… when suddenly a thought occurs to me and I whisper “can I just pass?” to which my ineffective aide said “yes” but then she didn’t do anything…and I wonder How exactly do I pass? Are there rules to this? What do I do now? I decide I must have to officially declare my intentions, so I said a bit louder “Um…Pass.”
And then Ms. Helper graciously and finally tells the guy behind me to start reading at “verse thirteen.”