Every Monday evening this summer I head out to a public park where I play volleyball with a group of college students and recent college graduates for pickup games.

Last night, the park was also being occupied by a local church, Phos Hilaron, for a summer vacation bible school (VBS). Small tent gazebos were set up and children rotated around the park to each station, learning a bible lesson, playing games, singing songs, and eating some snacks. At the end of VBS, a free volleyball clinic was being hosted by one of the church members, David, who was teaching personal skills about passing the ball, serving, setting another player up, and how to serve. I got to talk to him about the movie Tombstone, a western that I haven’t seen, and we making small talk to pass the time.

I didn’t join the clinic because I was about ten years older than the young teens for the targeted audience, and I knew it wasn’t meant for me. I instead played two games with the college crowd, and the team I played on was 1-2 at the end of the night. Around 10:00PM, David gathered the clinic in a small circle and brought the clinic into the close in a unique way - I will paraphrase his words as best I can:

“Tonight at Vacation Bible School we focused on one verse in the New Testament, Romans 12:2 - we learned about transforming our minds and changing the way we think. That concept can be very complex, but this is the way we explained it to the kids, ‘Think about thoughts that would make God smile.’ Our volleyball clinic was about teaching some basic team skills and also teaching you structured lessons. I was trying to transform your mind too. Now, who can how your mind transformed tonight regarding volleyball?”

Several of the students spoke about proper ball technique, where to hit the ball, previous stories of how they had been told to play before now, and discussed moves and stances and posture they had learned in the past hour. I smiled, thinking about how open they were in answering his questions, and what a good instructor he had been in a single hour.

He gave a simple yet powerful prayer where he thanked God for our bodies, for laughter, for learning new skills. He prayed for the students, the families of parents who had been watching the clinic from the sidelines, the college students in the background listening, and for the upcoming days of vacation bible school in the park. I felt God’s presence so clearly in that instance, and David finished his prayer and dismissed the kids.