Reflections from the First Day of VBS
By Jay Rivers | July 7, 2025
⸻
Today was a special day.
Not just because it was the first day of Vacation Bible School at my church—though that’s part of it. And not just because I was helping lead for the first time—though, honestly, that still feels surreal. It was a special day because I saw something I never thought I’d see: myself standing inside a church building with about a hundred kids, teaching them about Jesus, cheering alongside other volunteers, and feeling totally, fully alive.
⸻
⸻
That’s not where I came from.
Five years ago, I had never been part of a church. Never been to VBS. Rarely ever cracked open a Bible with intention. My life was about numbing the ache. I was drinking to quiet the noise. I was skeptical, proud, spiritually starved.
But God…
God had other plans.
In 2020, I surrendered. Asked Jesus to come into my heart. Quit drinking. Found family I didn’t know I had—cousins who became companions, one of whom was a pastor, the other who gave me a book called Jesus Calling. I read it every morning. I met my wife. We got married. We were baptized together. And somehow, all these little steps brought me here.
⸻
🕊 A Word from Buechner
This morning, before VBS started, I opened a book given to me by my stepmother Georgia—Listening to Your Life by Frederick Buechner. I turned to the page for July 7th. And it felt like the Lord was feeding me with it.
“Like sheep we get hungry, and hungry for more than just food. We get thirsty for more than just drink. Our souls get hungry and thirsty; in fact it is often that sense of inner emptiness that makes us know we have souls in the first place… like a shepherd, [God] feeds us. He feeds that part of us which is hungriest and most in need of feeding.”
— Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life (p. 177)
That’s it. That’s the truth that hits different when you’ve wandered through your own valley of the shadow. That hunger that gnaws under the surface of success, romance, escape, ambition—it can’t be satisfied by anything but God.
Not money.
Not sex.
Not alcohol.
Not popularity or praise or even the perfect house in the suburbs.
Only the Shepherd can lead us beside still waters. Only He can restore our soul.
⸻
🌱 Feeding the Flock
As I watched those kids today—laughing, learning, worshiping—I realized that most of them don’t yet carry the same scars we do. But they will. Life will bring its battles. Its losses. Its valleys. But what we’re doing in this church, what we’re planting in them now, it matters. It’s feeding something real.
And it’s feeding me too.
There’s a Children’s Moment starting to brew in my mind… something about the nature of sin, about human hunger, and about a little book called If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. That story hits different when you understand the endless cycle of “just one more thing” our flesh craves. The way we think this next fix will satisfy—but it never does. Not really.
But Jesus satisfies.
⸻
🐏 The Call of the Shepherd
The world tells us we’re foolish, greedy, half-holy at best.
But He calls us sheep.
And that’s not an insult—it’s an invitation.
Because the sheep who wander get found.
The sheep who hunger get fed.
The sheep who tremble get led.
So this is me, on day one of VBS, still writing The Walking Paths, still recovering from the years I wandered, still discovering the joy of being part of a church, still following the Shepherd’s voice.
He found me.
He fed me.
He’s leading me.
And if my story points you even a little closer to Jesus, then I’m doing what I was saved to do.
⸻
💬 Come Along, Friends.
There’s food in the manger.
There’s stillness in the valley.
There’s a Shepherd who knows your name.
Follow along as I continue writing The Walking Paths, a story of darkness and light, of lost sheep and found purpose.
The Walking Paths 