A Worker Approved

Robyn Jacobs stands in front of her class and reads a report about why she is a Christian. She tells everyone how she once knelt with her dad and prayed, how she asked Jesus into her heart, and how her whole life changed afterward. Mr. Southworth calls the report touching and says Robyn is a good example of someone trying to live what she believes. But a boy named Oscar has questions, and one of them sticks: if Jesus took away her sins, why did he have to die to do it? Robyn tells him that is just the way it works, which is not much of an answer, and she knows it.

Walking to Whit's End afterward with her friend Pamela, Robyn hopes the whole thing is behind her. Oscar comes running up instead, and he is not teasing at all - he liked her report, and he really wants to know. Pamela suggests asking Mr. Whittaker, since he always talks about things like this, and off they go.

At Whit's End, Whit hears the question and then does something surprising. Instead of answering, he turns to Connie Kendall, who has been learning Bible verses by heart, and asks her what she thinks. Connie takes a breath and explains it to Oscar step by step. God loves people so much that he gave his only Son. Sin separates people from God and carries a penalty none of them can pay. So Jesus paid it himself, dying in their place and rising again so that anyone who trusts him can live with God forever. Oscar still looks a little puzzled, so Connie takes him and Pamela back to the library to keep talking.

That leaves Robyn feeling small. She has gone to church her whole life, and Connie has only been a Christian a couple of months. How did Connie know all those verses? Whit tells her the plain truth: Connie studies the Bible for half an hour every single morning, and Whit himself reads a chapter from the Old Testament and one from the New every night before bed. If Robyn wants to answer questions like Oscar's, she is going to have to study too.

Robyn throws herself at it. She sets her alarm for five in the morning, stumbles over furniture in the dark, opens to Genesis, and falls sound asleep on her desk - waking up nearly late for school. She tries Whit's nighttime plan instead and drifts off somewhere in the long list of names at the start of Matthew. She even tries a trick Mr. Southworth mentions, recording lessons and listening through headphones while she sleeps, and all she gets out of it is a broken pair of headphones. Discouraged, she tells Whit she is simply not cut out for this, and maybe she should stop telling people she is a Christian at all so nobody asks her hard questions.

Whit spots the real problem. Robyn has been trying everyone else's way instead of finding her own. He asks about her favorite song, Beloved, and she sings it right through, verse reference and all, because she has sung it over and over until she knew it by heart. That, Whit says, is a study method she already owns: take five verses, read them again and again every day, even make up a tune for them, and move on to the next five once they stick. There is no single best way to study the Bible. The one thing that matters is opening it every day, and God will take care of the rest.

Then Whit mentions that he knows a very good Bible study, one that meets right about now, just down the hall. Robyn peeks into the library and finds Connie, Oscar, and Pamela already gathered, reading together the way they have every day since her talk with Whit. She asks if they can use another member. They pull out a chair for her, and Robyn sits down and opens her Bible.