I recently did a presentation at a small church whose pastor
is a good friend. This is a new work that started a couple of years ago. It is
always difficult to know when talking about real life circumstances how honest
I should be about what really happens. It is easy to dwell on the negative and
not mention the great things that are happening. I know that the media craves
the bad news in life because it grabs your attention! The unfortunate reality
is that we feed off the gory news at night and miss out on the good that
usually out ways the bad.
As we were wrapping up this presentation my pastor friend
had us do a Q and A that took about an hour with a variety of questions that
got back to the real life circumstances around life in generational poverty. We
were able to share both the sad news but also the success stories. The
challenge is that what most people remember is the fact that an uncle in my
painting neighborhood recently murdered his cousin in front of all of my little
guys. The talk the next week in my group wasn’t about how horrible life is when
you don’t follow God but did you see all of the blood.
When someone asks me what I do I hesitate at times to be
totally upfront. I have had teachers and social workers that have worked in my
larger neighborhood tell me point blank that what I’m doing is a waste of time.
I usually don’t let someone talk this way which means I end up defending the
cause of the forgotten underdog type. I know in my heart of hearts we are
making a difference. I know that stories are the best path to helping someone
understand how to put their life back together after it has been shattered. I
know that the typically storyteller will always ask whether you want the good
news or bad news first?
I picked up a good friend who helps with doing mailings and
volunteers for tutoring and our life group. We had talked the evening before
about some of her life challenges that come out of the brokenness in her
family. As I shared a couple stories of the brokenness in our group she
realized that her life wasn’t that bad after all and actually had many positive
highlights over the years. My point in talking about the ‘trash’ was to help
see the contrast with many in our group who have gone through life
transformation.
I’m in the middle of a great book by Philip Yancey, “Where
is God When it Hurts?” Yancey deals with the aftermath of horrible accidents
and how a person is supposed to live afterwards without hating God, family and
their own life. His point is that we can’t necessarily come up with a reason
for why something happened and whether I did something that either caused this
or God is punishing me. His way of dealing with the WHY question was to ask
what are you doing today with what happened yesterday? How should I live in the
midst of pain and suffering? Do I focus on blaming someone for what happened?
Do I take responsibility for my choices and decide to be different today based
upon what I experienced yesterday?
My point in writing this blog is to say that out of the ‘crappy’
stuff of life often comes beauty that is more than capable of transforming a
person’s life, change the nature of a family and see a neighborhood change over
time. As I finished my meeting with a young college student I wanted to
encourage him not to focus on the past but see God’s hand in the present
preparing him for the future. Yeah, he should be totally bummed because he was
in a car accident that saw his car get crunched; he was cited and hurt his
knee. Yet, he is alive and able to step back and learn from what happened!
I know that it is too easy for someone to put a price tag on
the cost of what it takes to redeem a wayward teen or 20 something. Yet, I want
to come back and scream from the mountain tops that if one of my kids, teens or
20 somethings turns around then all of the financial expense and the time of
myself and a multitude of mentors or tutors is amazingly worth it!
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