265 Basic Attitude and the Art of Living Together 8 manner, and practicing kindness and hospitality in a way that appeals to others (P4). This is a mission (P4) that includes empathy with people and children who suffer injustice, as other parts of the same transcript reveal. This final remark ties the devotion in the fifth meeting to the devotion in the seventh meeting, on 2 Samuel 4:4 and 19 (24–27). ‘Both passages are on Mephibosheth and how King David treats him’, summarise the minutes of the devotion leader’s explanation. ‘David’s basic attitude in this regard is characterised by an eye for the weak’. The devotion leader, who was from the outsider group, presented a fivefold conclusion on this basic attitude: David actively seeks out the underprivileged, he overcomes barriers that have sometimes been there for years, he has an inner drive to make his fellow human beings familiar with God’s goodness, he comes up with practical solutions to problems that are difficult for Mephibosheth himself to solve and he continues to be interested, which manifests itself in, for example, continued questioning. It is interesting to note how David’s attitude reflects what the participants claimed to see most perfectly in Christ. Two of the New Testament devotions focus on how Jesus Christ as the risen Lord motivates His disciples to follow Him. In the fourth meeting, an outsider group member opened with John 21: 15–19, where Jesus restores Peter as His disciple, asking his love and commanding him to feed His lambs and sheep, and, as the minutes report, ‘applies this part to teaching and interacting with children’. In the ninth meeting, another outsider group member read from Luke 24 verses 17–34. This devotion leader asked children what kinds of questions they would have asked the risen Christ if He were to walk suddenly besides them, as He did with the couple from Emmaus. This gave rise to some very deep and personal answers that showed how, with both Christian and non-Christian children, ‘something really happened, sometimes unnoticed, in the years they were here at school’. It is the presence of the living Jesus that caused this, and Christian teachers can learn from how He behaved Himself during the three-hour walk to Emmaus: ‘Really, as a teacher, quite rigorous, with questions that challenge further thinking’. The third New Testament devotion was the one that opened the 11th meeting, with its special attention on basic attitude formation. An insider group member read Luke 10: 25–27, on Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. The central message that the devotion leader saw in this ‘pictorial lesson about the Kingdom of God’ is that ‘serving turns out to be more important than knowledge’. The priest and the Levite knew more than the Samaritan, but they did not act as they should have done. The Samaritan probably knew much less about theology and the law of God, but he acted according to the will of God.
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