Needed – A speaker’s guide

For the past three weeks I’ve been teaching the Mom’s group at our church. We meet every Tuesday morning and I love this great group of women. My lessons have focused around the theme of Women God Uses. It’s so much fun for me to research Bible women each week and find out what we can learn from them to apply to our own lives.

Today, I taught on Hannah. Hannah was a woman with an amazing faith and a boldness to come before the Lord with her deepest desire – to have a child. I was totally encouraged to pray with boldness as I learned more and more about Hannah. But, that isn’t really the reason I need the speaker’s guide.

You see, today, as I was speaking, one of the moms was holding her child in her lap. Most kids go into the nursery but sometimes kids are hesitant, or too little, or whatever. This little girl was being good and sitting very quietly and was really no problem whatsoever. Suddenly, and without any warning, she started throwing up. Bless her heart, she was even quiet about that! But, it did leave me in a quandary. What is the proper protocol for a speaker when someone in the audience is throwing up? Do I stop and enlist everyone’s help in dealing with the mess? Do I leave it to a few women to deal with? What??? Where is the speaker’s handbook that tells me what to do?

I decided to plunge ahead. If you listen to my message on Hannah on the River Valley Church podcast you’ll definitely know when the “incident” occurred, unless of course, our amazing “podcast guru”, Tom Poch, is able to cut it out. So, as I’m writing this, I figured out what the proper response would have been. Stop the lesson, pray for healing for the dear, sweet little girl, and pray for extra energy for her mom (children rarely just throw up once) and THEN go on with the lesson. I’m sure it’s what Hannah would have done. Next time I’ll know.