I had flipped through Kenny's CCD textbook when he first brought it home a month ago and made mental notes of upcoming lessons.

One early lesson presented the Gospel story of Jesus encountering Zacchaeus in Jericho. I decided to have Kenny bring in a photograph of a knarly tree in Jericho taken during our tour in '99.

Walking Kenny to his room, I approached his teacher and asked whether she would be talking about Jericho this evening.

"Um, no, I don't think so."

"Are you covering chapter 4 tonight?"

"Yes ... but I haven't even read it over yet, so I really don't know what I'll be talking about!"

And there's some reason that I can't homeschool my kid? Somehow this lady with one year's experience who comes in cold after a month of once-a-week instruction is better than me?!

I gave her the photograph and said, "This may help the kids understand that the places described in the Bible actually exist in the real world." I left it at that, to her discretion.

After class, she returned the photo and said that she mentioned it but was too quick to say, "That Gospel story was only a small piece of the lesson." Yeah, so? It's actually a very well-known story, en par with The Woman at the Well and the kids ought to learn it.

My husband said that I did the right thing in trying to make biblical places "real" to the kids. He thinks that too many people believe the stories in the Bible to be fairy tales.

He ought to know.