VBS 2026: "ABIDE, DON'T STRIVE"

That Church By The Vape Shop — Vacation Bible School, Year Two

In an alternate universe in which the physical location plan for That Church By The Vape Shop panned out, we had ourselves another Vacation Bible School. Last year's inaugural VBS produced three genuine conversions, one accidental baptism of a neighbor's cat, and a water balloon incident that Sister Velma has agreed not to discuss further provided certain parties remain anonymous. This year, emboldened by that success and undeterred by its complications, the church pressed on. What follows is an account of what that looked like.

VBS DAY 1: "ABIDE, DON'T STRIVE"

Theme Verse: John 15:5 — "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing."

Location: Church Fellowship Tent — a 20x40 pop-up canopy zip-tied to a second, slightly smaller pop-up canopy held together by zip ties, prayer, and one suspicious bungee cord labeled DO NOT REMOVE (BROTHER EARL MEANS IT) to create what Brother Earl called "a nave" and what the fire marshal, had he visited, would have called "a conversation." Earl’s philosophy was that "Anything can become a fellowship hall with enough folding tables." The whole arrangement is currently sharing an electrical panel with Cloudz N' Puffz Vape 'n' Hookah Emporium next door, following an incident in which someone attempted to run three snow cone machines and an inflatable ark simultaneously off a single 20-amp circuit. The current Cloudz N' Puffz manager, a compact man named Gerald who wears a tribal tattoo sleeve and a look of permanent mild disappointment, has been remarkably gracious about the arrangement, possibly because Pastor Peaches gave him a pie last Christmas.

Speaker: Associate Pastor Leon "Peaches" Watkins — Youth Pastor, former minor league professional wrestler, current unlicensed barbecue competition judge, and the best ordained minister in the greater metro area at making an entrance at a children's ministry event through a curtain while the PA system plays his theme music.

Special Guest: A squirrel of unknown denominational affiliation.

Someone — it was Brother Earl, it is always Brother Earl — had rigged a Bluetooth speaker to the curtain rod, which began playing a gospel-inflected version of something that sounded suspiciously like a wrestling theme. Pastor Peaches burst through the curtain in a red-and-gold sequined tracksuit — rhinestone cross on the back, duct-taped Bible in one hand, a potted tomato plant in the other — and the children lost their minds. Most of them remembered last year; they understood that things were about to get extremely interesting.

"CHILDREN OF THE NEW COVENANT!" he boomed, planting his feet wide the way a man does when he has spent years being introduced by a ring announcer. "SAINTS OF THE SNACK TABLE! LITTLE DISCIPLES WHO HAVE ALREADY CONSUMED ENOUGH RED KOOL-AID TO POWER A SMALL NUCLEAR REACTOR!"

The kids screamed their approval. In the back row, Sister Velma from Facilities quietly opened a fresh legal pad and wrote the date at the top, the way a ship's navigator might mark the start of a voyage into uncertain waters.

"Now," said Pastor Peaches, holding up the tomato plant and waiting for the noise to die down, "I want to ask y'all a very important question, and I need you to really think before you answer, because the fate of your spiritual development may hinge on your response. Are you ready? Here it is." He paused dramatically, the way a man pauses when he knows the crowd is his. "What is this?"

"A plant!" several children said at once.

"Correct! It is a plant. Very good. We are off to a strong start." He turned it slowly in his hands. "And what happens if I snap this branch off right here?"

A small boy in the front row with a very serious face said, "It dies."

"It dies," Peaches confirmed, his voice dropping. "Now. For the past two thousand years, a whole lot of Christians have been walking around with this idea that the spiritual life is basically just a self-improvement project with a Jesus sticker on it. You try harder, you do better, you feel terrible when you mess up, you try harder again. Wash, rinse, repeat until Jesus comes back or you give up and take up golf. But Jesus, when He talked to His disciples before He died, did not say try. He said abide. To abide is to live; I abide on this planet. I don't have to expend a bunch of extra energy to keep my feet on this ground."

He opened his Bible to John 15 and read the verse slowly, giving the kids time to find it, and also giving himself time to do a slow, deliberate scan of the room the way a man surveys a crowd before saying something that is going to land.

"Now here is what I need you to understand," he said, setting the plant on the edge of the stage ceremoniously. "A branch has exactly one job. Not two jobs. Not a job and a side hustle and a passion project. One job. And that job is not to produce fruit — that's the vine's job. The branch is just connected. That is the entire assignment." He paused and spread his hands wide. "You mean to tell me my whole spiritual growth strategy ain't supposed to look like a squirrel doing CrossFit?"

The kids laughed.

At that precise moment, as though Scripture itself had arranged the timing — and frankly the case can be made that it had — a squirrel dropped through a gap in the tent zipper, assessed the room with the calm confidence of a creature that has never once doubted its place in the universe, walked directly to the snack table with the unhurried stride of someone who made reservations, and removed half a cinnamon roll.

The tent erupted.

"THAT SQUIRREL," Pastor Peaches said, pointing with the full extension of his arm, the way a referee signals a championship, "would be a thief if he were a human. I want to be clear about that. But he understands dependency. He is not in the woods somewhere trying to generate his own cinnamon rolls through rigorous personal effort and a positive mental attitude. He knows where the cinnamon rolls are, and he goes there." A pause. "I am not endorsing theft. I am endorsing the theological point, and I trust y'all to know the difference."

Sister Velma was already writing. The squirrel departed through the same gap it had entered, apparently satisfied.

Brother Earl watched it leave.

"He's been casing this place since Tuesday."

Pastor Peaches brought it home, and when he brought things home he brought them all the way in, like a man who has carried heavy things a long distance and is not going to set them down one step short of the door.

"Jesus does not stand at the entrance of your life with a clipboard, grading your spiritual performance based on your effort level that week. He says I am the vine. He says apart from Me you can do nothing. That is not a threat. That is an invitation. It is liberating, if you will let it be. You were never designed to generate this life on your own. Stop trying. Go to Him and get it. Let Him do what only He can do."

The tent was quiet for a moment — which, given the average age of the attendees and the ambient sugar concentration in the air, qualified as an outright miracle.

Then a child in the third row raised his hand and asked if there would be more cinnamon rolls.

There were.

Craft Time: "Fruit of the Spirit Trees" — each child decorating a construction-paper tree with paper fruit. One child glued seventeen bananas onto a paper oak tree. Another labeled every piece of fruit "Tacos." A third child produced something genuinely beautiful and then immediately sat on it.

Sister Velma recorded six pages of observations for future reference, then went back and added a seventh.

Day 1 Summary

Big Idea: The Christian life is not about striving. It's about connection to the One who does the growing.

Memory Verse: John 15:5

Snack: Branch-shaped pretzels

Incident Report: A squirrel, a cinnamon roll, and zero convictions.

VBS DAY 2: "THE HOLY SPIRIT AIN'T A VIBE"

Theme Verse: Galatians 5:25 — "If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit."

Location: Church parking lot, which shares a strip mall with Cloudz N' Puffz on the left, a nail salon called Nailed It (not a Christian message, just a coincidence, though Brother Earl has suggested a collaboration), a tax preparation service that is only open from January through April and then becomes a mystery, and a unit at the far end where the business changes every six months and is currently a mattress store, which Deacon Fitz says has always been money laundering in different fonts.

Weather: 96 degrees, with a heat index one parent volunteer described as "the wrath of God,” which is the kind of sentence that only makes sense after you've been standing in a parking lot in the South for two hours.

Special Appearance: Zion, the theology enthusiast kid, back for his second VBS and somehow even more prepared than last time.

Sister Velma had arrived at seven to set up folding chairs, the kind that pinch your fingers when you unfold them, which stack in a closet in a configuration that seems to defy physics on the way out. By nine o'clock she had reorganized the supply table, filed a written complaint with Pastor Peaches about the extension cord situation from the day before, and taped a laminated sign to the snack cooler — the big orange one with the cracked lid that has been at every church event since at least 2014 — that said "NOT A FOOTREST — THIS MEANS YOU, TUCKER." Tucker was eight years old. He had not yet arrived. Sister Velma was a woman who believed in getting ahead of problems.

Pastor Peaches arrived at 9:15 on a scooter, still wearing the tracksuit. The scooter was his daughter's and he was almost certainly too large for it.

"SAINTS!" He spread his arms wide as he climbed off with grandeur. "I have a question for you, and I want you to truly, genuinely sit with it before you answer, because this question goes straight to the heart of why a lot of otherwise sincere Christians are walking around tired and frustrated and wondering why the Christian life feels like a part-time job they didn't apply for. Here is the question: if God loves you — and He does, that is settled — and if God is all-powerful — and He is, that is also settled — then what exactly did He give you to help you live the life He called you to?"

"The Bible?" said one kid.

"The church?" said another.

"A good attitude?" said a third, with the specific energy of someone who doesn’t know, but wants credit for participating.

"All solid," said Peaches. "But I am looking for something bigger. He gave you Himself. God the Holy Spirit — third person of the Trinity, not a lesser partner, not a supporting character, God Himself — lives inside every person who has trusted Christ. Not a feeling, goosebumps, or whatever mysterious thing happens when the keyboard player finds the sustain pedal at 11:30 on a Sunday morning and half the congregation starts doing the Holy Sway. The Holy Spirit is God, and He moved in permanently the day you trusted Jesus. He did not sign a lease. He bought the building."

One of the adult volunteers asked a pre-arranged question from a notecard, "So why do we still make bad choices?"

Pastor Peaches replied, "Excellent question. Why does Brother Reggie still make potato salad? Some mysteries remain." He reached into a duffel bag that had been sitting at the base of the folding table he was using as a stage and produced two remote-control cars. One had batteries. One did not.

The battery-powered car, when switched on, shot across the blacktop and demolished a traffic cone fifteen feet away. The kids went completely sideways. The car without batteries sat exactly where he had put it, inert and sad.

"Which one had power?"

"THE ONE WITH BATTERIES!"

"Correct. Gold star. Now: some of y'all are out here trying to live the Christian life on your own effort, your own willpower, your own determination to just be better this time. And it is not working. And the reason it is not working is not that you need to try harder. The reason is that you are leaving the batteries sitting in the package. The Spirit is already in you. He is already there. The question Paul is asking in Galatians 5 is whether you are walking in step with Him — cooperating, yielding, listening — or whether you are white-knuckling it alone and wondering why you are exhausted."

At this point Zion raised his hand. Zion was a child who wore blue-light glasses and carried a pocket ESV and a small notebook in which he wrote things like "pneumatology query — follow up" and "check Grudem re: progressive sanctification." He was, as Pastor Peaches had said privately and with genuine affection, "going to be somebody's favorite seminary professor someday, and God help that somebody."

"Pastor Peaches," said Zion, "I want to make sure we're being precise. The indwelling of the Spirit is theologically distinct from the filling of the Spirit — the filling being a repeated experience tied to surrender and obedience, whereas the indwelling is positional and permanent at salvation. Are we conflating those?"

A bird that had been sitting on the Nailed It sign flew away.

"I am not conflating them," said Pastor Peaches pleasantly, with the practiced calm of a man who has been interrupted by Zion before and has made his peace with it. "I am simplifying for an audience whose median age is nine. But since you have raised it — yes, every believer is permanently indwelt by the Spirit at the moment of salvation. The Spirit is a Person, so you cannot have “some” of Him. That is the foundation. What Paul means in Galatians 5 by keeping in step is about moment-by-moment cooperation with a Person who is already living in you. You are not summoning something from outside. You are yielding to Someone who is already within. We have every spiritual blessing in Christ already, but our bucket gets bigger, so we can ‘be being filled’. Those are genuinely different things. We good?"

"Tentatively," said Zion, writing something down.

"I will take tentatively. Now sit."

A kid in the back raised his hand and asked whether the Holy Spirit had ever made anyone fly.

"Philip got relocated in Acts 8, so I would not rule it out,” said Peaches. ‘Stay in school."

Sister Velma confiscated Zion's laser pointer before he could use it to interrupt Peaches by diagramming the hypostatic union on the side of the Cloudz N' Puffz building.

Three children fell asleep during the subsequent discussion. One appeared to have a genuine theological conversion. Sister Velma gave the sleeping children juice boxes when they woke up and declined to discuss it.

Big Idea: The Christian life is not difficult. It is impossible — for the flesh. Which is precisely why God gave you Himself. You were never meant to do this alone.

Memory Verse: Galatians 5:25

Snack: “Fruit of the Spirit” Smoothies (Velma's recipe; Zion requested the nutritional breakdown; of course)

VBS DAY 3: "LOVE IS NOT JUST BEING NICE"

Theme Verse: 1 John 4:19 — "We love because He first loved us."

Location: Main Sanctuary — which is the largest of the three rooms in the church's unit of the strip mall, carpeted in a shade of burgundy that the previous tenant (a Curves fitness center, 2009-2014) had installed and that the church has never had the budget to replace, and which has, along one wall, a hand-painted mural of the River Jordan that Brother Earl did himself and that everyone agrees captures the spirit of the thing even if the perspective is a little ambitious.

Emergency Status: Elevated.

Pastor Peaches opened the day with what he called "a ground rule," delivered from the small wooden platform that served as the stage, which was elevated exactly eight inches off the ground. It had a slight wobble on the left side that everyone had simply learned to account for.

"We are going to talk about love today," he said, “Love might be letting your cousin have the last mozzarella stick."

He had the kids open to 1 John 4 and read the verse together, and then he did something that caught the room off guard. He got quiet; not building-to-something quiet, just quiet.

"Here is what most people think love is," he said, walking slowly across the platform, which creaked on the left side exactly as expected. "They think it's a feeling. They think it shows up when things are good and disappears when things are hard and it's basically just warmth you feel toward people who are being decent to you at the moment. But that is not what John is describing. John says we love because He first loved us. The love does not originate in you. It flows through you from a source that doesn't run dry, because the source is God Himself. You cannot manufacture this love through effort and good intentions. You receive it from Him, and then you pass it on." He paused. "And here is the part that matters most: His love for you has nothing to do with how well you are currently performing. He loved you before you believed, before you had anything to offer, before you had cleaned anything up. That's what you've received. That's what you're called to extend. It’s more about treating people fairly and faithful actions than fuzzy feelings. Basically, God sends the rain for everyone, so we give someone a sandwich if they need a sandwich if we can."

A kid named Jaylen raised his hand. "What if people are mean, though?"

"Then congratulations," said Peaches. "You have discovered people. They are frequently mean. Love them anyway — not because they deserve it, not because you feel like it, but because the love of God in you is bigger than the worst they've got. This is not a natural posture. It is a supernatural one. Which is why we are not talking about trying to love better — we are talking about receiving love from the One who is love, and letting it move through you."

One child helped another pick up a spilled box of crayons. One shared his fruit snacks without being asked. Three children wrote anonymous encouraging notes and left them in various locations around the building. One of those notes read: "YOU LOOK LESS WEIRD TODAY." Another said: “GOD STILL LIKES YOU PROBABLY.” The identity of the author remains under active investigation, though Sister Velma has a strong suspicion. Another simply said: “YOU LOOK LESS WRINKLY TODAY.” Sister Velma intercepted it halfway to the intended recipient. She quietly folded it in half before Miss Gloria could see it and slipped it into the shredder. "The child meant well," she said. "The child also enjoys living."

Meanwhile, someone had used a permanent marker to write "JESUS KNOWS YOUR WIFI PASSWORD" across the top of the church refrigerator — a side-by-side model from approximately 2008 that ran a little warm on the left and that the congregation had simply adapted to — in letters three inches high.

Sister Velma stared at it for a long moment.

"I am currently," she said, in the particular quiet voice she used when she had decided to be very controlled about something, "one unsupervised arts-and-crafts project away from using this mop for purposes the manufacturer did not intend."

Nobody was entirely sure what that meant.

Nobody wanted clarification.

"See, that's maturity," said Pastor Peaches, appearing in the doorway. "A few years ago she'd have already demonstrated by reenacting Exodus personally."

Sister Velma turned toward him with the slow, deliberate movement of a large celestial body adjusting its orbit.

Pastor Peaches immediately turned around and left.

He closed the day with the thought that had been the engine underneath everything else, and he delivered it without the volume, because some things land harder when they're said quietly. At least, that’s what he had learned from watching old videos of Jake “The Snake” Roberts.

"God's love for you is not the reward for your behavior," he said. "It is the reason your behavior changes. You do not earn His love by getting your act together. You get your act together because you've already got His love, and it turns out that changes things from the inside out. That is not a loophole. That is the whole point. The order matters more than almost anything."

Big Idea: You love from a full tank, not an empty one. God loved you first, and everything flows from that.

Memory Verse: 1 John 4:19

Snack: Heart-shaped PB&J, cut with surprising artistry by Deacon Fitz, who had been drafted into service under circumstances that remain somewhat murky. He brought to sandwich-artistry a level of focus and craft that raised questions about his prior experience.

Open Investigation: The refrigerator. The note. Tucker is a person of interest in both, and has an alibi that, while technically credible, raises additional questions.

VBS DAY 4: "YOU GOTTA RENEW YOUR MIND"

Theme Verse: Romans 12:2 — "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

Location: Fellowship Hall. At some point, a wall was removed between two separate tenant spaces in the strip mall to create one larger room. It has two dropped ceilings at slightly different heights, a feature that Brother Earl describes as "character" and that Sister Velma describes as "a possible code violation."

Special Equipment: A bunch of pool noodles, folding tables, and one dry-erase marker of suspicious girth.

"SAINTS OF THE SANCTIFIED SUMMER PROGRAM!"

Peaches had arrived that morning looking like a man with something to say, which he always was, but today more so. He was on the stage — the eight-inch platform, left side wobbling as ordained — and he had his preaching voice turned all the way up before the room had fully settled.

"TODAY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT YOUR BRAIN!"

"I thought we were talking about Jesus," said a child near the front.

"EXACTLY," said Pastor Peaches, pointing at him with the energy of a man whose point has just been made for him. "Because some of y'all have got Jesus in your spirit and YouTube skibidi toilet cartoons in your decision-making, and that is a gap the Lord would like us to address this morning."

He put Romans 12:2 on the screen — a 55-inch flatscreen that the church had bought used and that displayed everything with a faint greenish tint that nobody mentioned anymore — and read it twice, the second time slower.

"Here is what happened when you got saved," he said, coming down off the platform and walking the room, because some things need to be said while moving. "God gave you a new heart and a new spirit. Done. Finished. Settled. You are a new creation in Christ, and that fact is not contingent on how you feel this morning or how last week went or whether you handled that situation with your brother the way you wish you had. But your mind — the part of you that processes information and makes decisions and replays memories and tells stories about who you are and whether you're worth anything — your mind still has old files in it. Lies about who you are. Distorted pictures of who God is. Old scripts that still run in the background."

He pointed at a kid essentially at random. The kid's eyes went wide.

"You still remember that thing you did in third grade, don't you."

It was not really a question.

The kid went pale. "Yes."

"The enemy," said Peaches, "loves reruns. He will run that highlight reel for free, twenty-four hours a day, for the rest of your natural life, if you let him. But here is what Paul says: you can be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Not patched. Not managed. Transformed. The Greek word is metamorphoō —"

"Same root as metamorphosis," said Zion, from his chair, without raising his hand.

"— same root as metamorphosis," Peaches continued without missing a beat, "which Zion would like credit for, and I am giving it to him. The same process that turns a caterpillar into a butterfly is available for how you think. But it requires feeding your mind truth instead of lies. It requires letting the Word of God rewrite the old script with a true one."

Zion raised his hand. "The anakainōsis — the renewal — is a continuous present in the Greek. Paul isn't describing a one-time event."

"He is correct," said Peaches. "This is ongoing. Your mind doesn't renew itself in a single download. It's a process of day-by-day replacing what's false with what's true."

"I just wanted to make sure we weren't implying it was instantaneous."

"I did not imply that. Available and instantaneous are different words."

"Fair point."

"Write it down."

Zion wrote it down.

On the stage sat two helmets. One was labeled TRUTH. The other was labeled ABSOLUTE NONSENSE in large red letters. The kids had to sort statements, and they got into it with a conviction that was genuinely encouraging.

"Jesus loves me." Truth. Unanimous, emphatic, no deliberation required.

"God gets tired of forgiving me." Absolute Nonsense. The room rejected this one with actual indignation, like they'd been personally insulted on God's behalf, which was the correct response.

"Dinosaurs invented taxes." The room divided almost exactly down the middle, which Peaches said was not a theological problem but was a historical one, and they moved on.

By the time they reached "I have to earn my way back into God's good graces after I sin," the kids were getting it at a level that was almost startling. "NONSENSE!" several of them yelled, and they meant it.

"That is exactly right," said Peaches. "Your standing before God was established at the cross. It does not go up when you behave and down when you don't, like some kind of spiritual credit score. What changes when you sin is your experience of the relationship — the peace, the closeness, the joy. But your identity as God's child? That is not on a scoreboard somewhere. That was settled when you trusted Christ. Renewing your mind means learning to think from that settled identity instead of straining toward it like it's something you still have to achieve. You share a spirit with Jesus; you cannot get any closer, and feeling distant only leads to more sinning."

Sister Velma, who had been standing in the doorway with her arms folded since approximately the dinosaur moment, quietly left, returned with her own Bible open to Romans 12, sat down in a folding chair in the back, and did not say another word for the rest of the lesson.

But she was nodding. Slowly. With her eyes closed.

Every adult in the room understood what this meant and carefully did not remark on it.

Big Idea: Your identity is already settled in Christ. Now your thinking has to catch up.

Memory Verse: Romans 12:2

Snack: Mind-Renewal Popcorn — white cheddar, Velma's suggestion, inexplicably good, recipe not shared.

Pool Noodle Incident: The pool noodles were for a game that had not been fully explained before someone swung one and the situation escalated beyond the point where explanation seemed useful. No injuries. One apology. One pool noodle was retained as evidence.

VBS DAY 5: "HOPE AIN'T WISHFUL THINKING"

Theme Verse: Titus 2:13 — "Waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ."

Location: The far end of the strip mall parking lot, where the church had set up a canopy borrowed from a family who used it for tailgating, still bearing a small University of Memphis sticker on one pole that nobody had managed to remove. Four folding tables were arranged in a square beneath it, covered in tablecloths held down by the snack cooler and a roll of paper towels. 

Conditions: It was hot enough that Brother Earl, stationed at the parking lot entrance in an orange safety vest and a personal fan clipped to his shirt, claimed to have seen the New Jerusalem shimmering above the asphalt out near the highway. Zion said this was theologically conceivable, but meteorologically it was a heat mirage. Brother Earl invited little Zion to come work the entrance next year and see what he thought then.

Pastor Peaches arrived in sunglasses and a shirt that said TEAM RESURRECTION in block letters. He looked like a man who had slept eight hours, thought carefully about the future, and felt good about it.

"What are y'all looking forward to?" he asked.

The answers came fast, overlapping: summer vacation plans, pizza, not doing homework, owning a wolf, the total collapse of the global broccoli industry, etc.

"Interesting," said Peaches, surveying the crowd with the patient expression of a man absorbing a lot of information. "Concerning in places. But interesting." He opened his Bible. "I want to talk to you about a word. The word is hope. Because in the way we use it every day, that word has gotten soft. We say I hope it doesn't rain or I hope they still have the good flavor and what we mean is: I would prefer that outcome, but I have no particular confidence in it. That is not what the Bible means by hope. Biblical hope is not crossed fingers. It is not optimism. It is certainty about something that hasn't happened yet."

A girl raised her hand. "Like Christmas?"

Peaches pointed at her like she had just hit a walk-off home run. "Exactly like Christmas. You are not pacing around on December 24th in existential uncertainty about whether presents exist. You know they are coming. You have seen them come before. You have a basis for confidence. The certainty is the whole point."

"Unless your uncle gets arrested," said a boy in the back.

"That," said Peaches, carefully, "is a different lesson, and I am genuinely sorry about your uncle, and we will pray for him before we leave today."

He managed to get back to the topic. He described resurrection — not the vague, floaty, cloud-and-harp version that most of these kids had absorbed from cartoons and the edges of funerals — but the physical, bodily, world-made-right version that Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 15, the version where the creation itself gets redeemed, where death is the last enemy and it is actually defeated, not just postponed. No sickness. No death. No funerals where people say the wrong thing and you stand there not knowing what to do with your hands. No body that fails you. No grief that doesn't have an answer on the other side of it.

The canopy got quiet. A few kids who had lost people were visibly sitting with something.

Then Tucker raised his hand. "Will dogs be there?"

Pastor Peaches looked at him for a long moment without any condescension at all, because it was a real question asked in complete seriousness.

"I don't know," he said. "The Bible doesn't tell us directly. But here's what I do know: God's original plan for a world with no sin included animals, and whatever He has prepared is going to be better than the best thing you can imagine right now. I trust Him with the details." He paused. "What I can tell you is that Jesus came back in a body, and the disciples recognized Him, and He ate fish with them on the beach. So whatever it's like on the other side of resurrection, it's not nothing. It's more than you've got now. Not less."

Tucker nodded, apparently satisfied, and this was the most at peace Tucker had looked all week.

Brother Earl wiped his forehead. "I'm looking forward to a glorified lower back."

Every adult said, "Amen."

Craft time produced the Future Resurrection Bodies, assembled from construction paper and pipe cleaners and googly eyes and an ambition unconstrained by biological plausibility. A superhero. A velociraptor. Something with seven arms and laser eyes whose creator described it simply as "improved." Zion built a theologically annotated figure with a Post-it note quoting 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 affixed to its left shoulder. Sister Velma wrote "DOCTRINAL REVIEW REQUIRED" in the legal pad, but she was smiling when she wrote it, because she knew that Jesus had been mistaken for a gardener after He came back, which suggested we were all going to seem pretty human, and that seemed fine.

Big Idea: Christian hope is not wishful thinking. It is certainty about something that hasn't arrived yet — and it changes the way you live right now.

Memory Verse: Titus 2:13

Snack: Future Glory Popsicles — rainbow sherbet, which Brother Earl described, while handing them out, as "a little taste of what's coming," and he meant it simply and kindly, and the kids received it exactly that way.

VBS DAYS 6 & 7: "LOVE PEOPLE AND FINISH STRONG"

Day 6

Theme Verse: John 13:35 — "By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

Location: Entire church property, which is to say: the parking lot, the rooms of the strip mall unit, the narrow strip of sidewalk along the front, and a small square of grass at the corner that lives miraculously in defiance of the rest of the block, which has given up on grass.

Status: While volunteer fatigue was approaching theoretical limits, morale was paradoxically high, in the way that morale gets when something that has been hard but worthwhile is almost done.

Day 6 was service day. Instead of sitting and listening, the kids went out and did things.

They cleaned up the block for two stretches in either direction from the church — which took longer than expected, because the block needed it. They wrote encouragement cards for church members who were sick or homebound, sitting at the folding tables with markers and cardstock in an extended quiet that nobody had anticipated and nobody disrupted. They walked two blocks to the police precinct and delivered snacks, which produced a small moment of unexpected grace when one of the officers recognized Deacon Fitz from a prior interaction. By some collective unspoken agreement, they all simply moved forward together in the spirit of John 13:35, without a word being said about anything.

One child left an encouraging note on the door of Miss Claudette, a seventy-three-year-old woman who had been attending this church before it had a building — back when it met in Brother Zeke's ex-coworker’s living room and the worship team was two acoustic guitars and a guy who played tambourine with more enthusiasm than precision. Miss Claudette wept. She clutched the note to her chest and said she was going to frame it, and she meant it entirely. Sister Velma, who had been standing in the hallway and witnessed this through the screen door, walked directly to the supply closet, went inside, and stood there for four minutes. She came out composed.

"I'm not going to say what happened in there," she told Pastor Peaches.

"You don't have to," he said.

Big Meech from the vape shop was volunteering at VBS this year. He had overheard last year's lessons and wound up getting baptized. He was patient with the kids in the way that only comes from knowing what it is to need patience extended to you, and he was funny in a way that didn't require anyone to be the butt of it. He remembered every kid's name. He knew which ones needed encouragement and which ones needed a boundary delivered pleasantly but without room for negotiation. Three children asked him privately whether he had been a professional wrestler, like Pastor Peaches. He did not correct them. He told them they could ask him questions about God, any time, and he meant it.

Before dismissal, Pastor Peaches brought the kids under the tailgating canopy and sat on the edge of one of the folding tables.

"Some people think Christianity is mostly about being right," he said, in his regular voice, not the preaching one. "Correct doctrine. Correct behavior. Correct opinions stacked in the correct order. And I'll tell you something — doctrine matters. Zion, don't look at me like I'm setting you up, I'm agreeing with you — doctrine matters. But Jesus did not say by this everyone will know that you are My disciples: your thorough grasp of systematic theology. He said love. The love you have for each other is what makes people on the outside stop and wonder what you've got that they don't. That's the testimony. Love first."

"Love first, nerd later," Zion said under his breath.

"That's basically what I said on Day 2," Peaches confirmed, "and I stand by it."

Big Idea: The world doesn't recognize disciples by their arguments. It recognizes them by their love.

Memory Verse: John 13:35

Snack: Encouragement Cookies, baked by Velma herself at 5 a.m., a fact she mentioned to no one and which everyone found out anyway, and which is not to be discussed or made into a larger thing than it is.

Day 7: THE GRAND FINALE

Theme Verse: Philippians 1:6 — "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."

Attendance: Lots of people, including several people who were not enrolled in VBS, but who seemed genuinely glad to be there, which is about as good as any church can hope for.

The volunteers were tired on the final day — hollowed out a little, but full at the same time. Brother Earl had been at his post since seven. Sister Velma had fresh pages in the legal pad. Big Meech was there early and had already set up thirty chairs without being asked.

Pastor Peaches stood at the front of the parking lot with his microphone and looked at the crowd — kids who had learned things, made things, served people, written notes, asked questions, eaten snacks, and been, in the aggregate, more than you might have hoped for and less catastrophic than you had any right to expect.

He let the quiet sit for a moment.

Then: "Y'ALL. WE MADE IT."

Pastor Peaches grabbed the microphone with both hands and planted his feet like he was about to body-slam the devil through the timekeeper’s table.

"CHILDREN OF THE NEW COVENANT!" he roared. "LET ME TELL YOU WHAT WE HAVE BEEN YELLIN' ABOUT ALL WEEK, BROTHER!"

He pointed across the crowd as if challenging invisible opponents.

"JESUS SAVED YOU! Not because you were good enough! Not because you tried hard enough! Not because you finally got your act together! He saved you because HE IS JESUS! That's who He is! That's what He does!"

The kids cheered.

"AND WHEN HE MOVED IN..." Peaches slapped a hand against his chest hard enough to make the microphone pop. "HE DIDN'T SIGN A SIX-MONTH LEASE! HE DIDN'T SAY, 'We'll see how this goes!' He didn't pack an emergency suitcase in case you had a rough Tuesday! HE MOVED IN FOREVER, JACK! The Holy Spirit is not pacing around Heaven wondering whether He's made a terrible investment!"

He looked around the crowd like a man who had consumed enough caffeine to hear colors.

"AND LISTEN TO ME! Jesus never said, 'Go out there and squeeze fruit out of yourself until your forehead veins look like interstate highways!' NO! He said, 'I AM THE VINE!' Brother, when has anybody ever walked through an orchard and heard a branch screaming, 'I'M TRYING SO HARD TO MAKE AN APPLE!'?"

He cupped a hand to his ear.

"NEVER!"

"BECAUSE THAT'S THE TREE'S JOB!"

He jabbed a finger skyward.

"YOU ABIDE! HE PROVIDES!"

The kids immediately started chanting it.

"YOU ABIDE!"

"HE PROVIDES!"

"LOUDER!"

"HE PROVIDES!"

Peaches gave the crowd Dusty Rhodes’ “Million Dollar Smile”.

"AND YOUR MIND!" He pointed to his forehead. "Some of y'all got Jesus living in your spirit while your brain's still running software from the Kingdom of Dumb! That's why God doesn't just tell you, 'THINK HARDER!' He gives you TRUTH! Every lie you've believed about yourself? Jesus walks in carrying the truth like a steel chair, brother, and the lie is about to have a VERY BAD AFTERNOON!"

He spun dramatically.

"AND THEN HE GIVES YOU HOPE! Not 'I hope this works out.' Not 'Maybe if I'm lucky.' Biblical hope is certainty! It is standing in the fourth quarter already knowing who wins because you've read the back of the Book! Death loses! Jesus wins! The resurrection is coming! Somebody oughta shout about that!"

Several children did.

"AND LOVE!" Peaches threw both arms wide. "You don't wake up every morning manufacturing enough love to impress God! HE LOVED YOU FIRST! HE FILLED THE TANK! You're just driving the car! His love comes in... and then it goes out to everybody else!"

He slowed just enough for the last point to land.

"And don't you miss this."

His voice dropped from arena volume to something quieter.

"The whole Christian life is Jesus."

He saved you.

He lives in you.

He grows you.

He renews you.

He gives you hope.

He loves people through you.

And, brother...

He has NEVER started a work He couldn't finish.

"Philippians says, 'He who began a good work in you WILL bring it to completion.' Not 'might.' Not 'if you don't mess it up.' WILL!"

He spread his arms toward the crowd.

"So quit carrying a burden Jesus already carried! Quit trying to manufacture what only He can produce! Quit acting like the branch has to be the Vine! Rest in Christ! Abide in Christ! Trust Christ!"

He pointed toward Heaven one last time.

"Because from the first moment of your salvation... to the last breath you'll ever take on this version of this planet... and all the way into forever..."

He smiled.

"IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN JESUS, BROTHER!"

Jesus finishes what He starts every single time.

He stayed on that last one.

"Philippians 1:6," he said. "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. This is not an encouraging thought. This is not a motivational poster. This is a promise from God about what God is going to do — not what you are going to manage to pull off if you can just stay focused and try harder this time. He started something in you the day you trusted Christ, and He will finish it. You are not a project He might abandon. You are not a student He might fail and send home. You are the work of His hands, and He does not leave things unfinished."

The parking lot was very quiet.

Even Zion, who had not stopped taking notes since Day 1, sat with his pen still.

Even the toddlers, who understood nothing of the theology and everything of the moment.

Even Sister Velma, standing to the side with her arms crossed — her usual posture, the one that said I am present and I am watching and I reserve the right to take action — and whose face had done something private and complicated that nobody with any sense was going to draw attention to.

Then Brother Earl unveiled the inflatable obstacle course.

It was called THE NARROW WAY, and it had been rented from a party supply company whose slogan was "We Inflate Your Dreams." It had been inflated next to the Cloudz N' Puffz parking section since six that morning. It was immediately blocked by six children carrying funnel cakes, which Pastor Peaches said was more theologically accurate than the planning committee had intended.

Big Meech ran the afternoon the way he ran everything this week — with the ease of someone who had found out he was good at something and was quietly grateful for it. He remembered names. He settled disputes with a fairness that the kids respected because it was real. He gave three other volunteers his number. The church had already talked informally about whether he wanted to do something more official next year, and he had said he would think about it, which everyone understood to mean yes.

Zion delivered a twelve-minute theological summary of the week. It contained four Greek words, two references to church fathers, one digression into ancient Near Eastern covenant structures, and a conclusion that was genuinely moving. The youngest children assumed with total confidence that he was speaking Elvish. Among the adults the jury was more divided, but the consensus was that wherever he ended up, he would be formidable.

Then, the squirrel returned. He was not alone.

Six squirrels came over the low concrete divider from the strip mall flower bed — if you could call it a flower bed, it was mostly mulch with aspirations — and descended on the snack table with the organized precision of a group that had clearly done reconnaissance. The situation developed faster than anyone could have predicted.

One squirrel took a churro. One took a hot dog from a plate that hadn't even been set out yet, which raised questions about timing. One made sustained, deliberate eye contact with Sister Velma in a way that could only be described as a challenge.

Sister Velma reached slowly for her mop, which she had brought to the parking lot that morning because she had been at this church long enough to know.

"This," said Velma, "ends today."

What happened next was not, technically, a battle. It was more of a negotiated withdrawal. 

One squirrel—clearly the same ringleader from earlier, wearing the unmistakable confidence of a repeat offender—trotted toward the snack table. Sister Velma looked at the squirrel. The squirrel looked at Sister Velma. Neither blinked. Big Meech quietly slid the entire tray of churros three feet to the left without breaking eye contact with the squirrel.

The squirrel considered the new tactical situation, thought better of it, picked up half a hamburger bun instead, and retreated with what could only be described as professional dignity.

Sister Velma gave the smallest nod anyone had ever seen.

"Good adjustment," she said.

Big Meech nodded once.

"Thank you, ma'am."

As the sun tilted toward evening and the temperature dropped from actively dangerous to merely uncomfortable, Pastor Peaches took the microphone one final time.

"Children of the Most High," he said. "This week was not about becoming somebody new. Jesus already did that. The work is done. What we have been sitting with all week is whether you actually believe it — whether you are willing to live from what is already true about you in Christ rather than straining toward it like it is still something you have to earn."

He looked around at all of them.

"You are loved. Not someday. Not pending your next performance review. Not contingent on how next week goes. You are loved right now, today, exactly as you are, by the God who made you and redeemed you at the highest possible price. You are forgiven — not just for the sins you can remember, but for the ones you haven't committed yet, because the cross was final and the grace it purchased does not expire. You are holy — not because you have achieved holiness, but because the Holy One lives in you. And you are His. That is not on the scoreboard. That does not fluctuate. He began this work and He will finish it."

He let it sit.

"And if a squirrel steals your churro..."

"...forgive him," several children shouted.

Peaches nodded solemnly.

"Correct."

He looked toward the snack table.

"...but I'm still going to be a little irritated."

The T-shirt cannon — which Brother Earl had been waiting to deploy since 9 a.m. with the patience of a man who understood that timing was everything — fired twice. Someone started the worship music, and for a few minutes in a strip mall parking lot in the “wrong” part of town, between a vape shop and a nail salon with a sign that was missing two letters, people who had spent a week sitting in folding chairs on hot asphalt worshipping a God they could not see went ahead and did it again, which either seems crazy or the most reasonable thing in the world, depending on where you're standing. Pastor Peaches stepped off the milk crate he used as a platform and stood in the parking lot for a moment, just a large man with a honey bun in his pocket, and he looked like what he was, which was somebody who believed what he had just said. 

VBS 2026 concluded with:

93% spiritual enrichment 

4% snack-related incidents 

2% squirrel activity 

1% unexplained glitter — Velma's final report estimates it will remain in the building until the return of Christ, at which point it will presumably be redeemed along with everything else

Sister Velma's final volunteer evaluation of Big Meech: "Competent. Trustworthy. Good with children. Handled the squirrel situation appropriately. I have no notes."

This was the first time in recorded history that Sister Velma had submitted an evaluation with no notes. The legal pad was open on her desk. The page was blank. She looked at it for a moment. Then she closed it.

Pastor Peaches sat on the tailgate of Brother Earl's truck and ate the last of a gas station honey bun that was not quite fresh but was not quite not fresh either, which is the best a gas station honey bun can aspire to. The strip mall parking lot was empty now except for a shopping cart that had wandered over from the Kroger and seemed content to stay. The sky was doing the thing it does in summer just before full dark, where it cannot decide between purple and navy and becomes briefly both.

"Good week," Earl said.

"Good week," Peaches agreed.

"Squirrel activity up from last year."

"Everything is cyclical, but ain’t nothin’ new under the sun."

Earl nodded with the authority of a man who had also folded a great many chairs. They sat with the quiet for a while.

"Velma gave Meech a clean evaluation," Peaches said. Earl took a long moment with this. "No notes?" "No notes." Another long moment. "Lord have mercy." "He did," Peaches said. "He really did."

He finished the honey bun and crumpled the wrapper and held it for a moment because there was no trash can nearby, which is a thing that happens to everyone eventually, and you either become bitter about it or you put it in your pocket. He put it in his pocket. He looked up at the sky, then back at the shopping cart sitting alone beneath the newly lit parking lot lights, and he considered it for a while.

It had not manufactured its own groceries. It had not decided its own direction. It had not propelled itself across the asphalt. It had simply received what someone stronger placed inside it and followed where someone stronger pushed it, and it had gone exactly as far as the last person pushing it had taken it, and it had never once confused being carried along with earning the trip. It was, by every measure, an excellent shopping cart.

"Well," Peaches said quietly, "that'll preach."

Because that was the whole week, wasn't it — the thing he had been trying to say in a hundred different ways to children who were half-listening and squirrels who were not listening at all. A branch doesn't grow itself. A sheep doesn't shepherd itself. Everything God made to receive from something greater is happiest when it stops pretending otherwise.

He looked toward the church. "Lord," he said, "keep reminding me that the Christian life isn't me dragging You where I think we ought to go." He paused. "It's You pushing me where I could never get on my own."

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