“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper,
that He may be with you forever” (John 14:16)
Hey Gang: I want to share a piece of wisdom that I have
acquired on the roadways and by-ways of this world. That temptation is a way of life! Now, I am sure that is not a new revelation
to you. And temptation leads to which
dog you will feed today – the white dog or the black dog.
Bruce Wilkerson in his book The
3-minute Temptation Buster made a point that I can identify with: “Each
time I am confronted with temptation my emotions send me messages of internal
agitation”
.
While working in a detention
facility in California, I had occasion to work with some very tough hombres and
enjoyed chewing the fat with them. You
see, most of these hombres had never just ‘sat down and had a true conversation’
with someone. I wanted to know what was going
on in their heads and their hearts. So, each night after we had put the kids
down for the night, I would get one youth out of his room and went on a fishing
expedition.
Ted was a unique sort of lad that
made my top ten list of the toughest kids I saw go through juvvy, while I was
there. He was one of the top dogs in a gang and it was suggested that he had
probably taken a life or two of a rival gang member. At that time, with the Watt’s riots still
fresh in every ones minds, it was open season on rival gang members. Kind of like Chicago today.
One of my favorite questions: “Have
you ever been to church?” This I
followed with, “Have you ever heard of the man called Jesus?” Most did not have a clue who Jesus was. From there I did some probing to learn if
they had ever felt love, not surface sex-type, but love from deep in their
gut. The response was usually the
same. It was the same look you might
have, if you had been locked in a cellar for all of your life and knew there
must be something better out there but you had not had the luxury of
experiencing it.
I asked these questions setting the
lads up for this question, “You have done some pretty nasty things in your
life. Did you ever feel deep in pit of
your stomach that what you were doing was wrong?
Did you ever wish you had not done them? Did you ever dream that one day you would
find a rainbow or pot of gold and your life would be more than the pain and
agony that has been your life?”
Tragically most would say, “When I
was a little guy I would dream of my mom and dad together in a house on a
street where we were a happy family, but I don’t dream of that anymore because
I know it is an impossible dream.
When I asked them if they knew in
their heart that what they were doing was wrong, the response was always the
same; “Ah, ya, Man! Something in here,
pointing to their chest cavity, lets me know.”
But they also said, “As you grow older that voice is weaker and weaker
and it is easier to hurt people without feeling sad or guilty.
In my three year tenure in the Juvenile
Hall I had conversations with a hundreds of kids asking these basic questions
and, of those on my top-ten list of toughest hombres, nearly every one of these
bad hombres had a heart that had been destroyed because no one had dug deep
into their heart or given them any hope.
Most of these bad hombres were in my
section awaiting parole violation hearings and shipment to another facility
where they would be locked in cages with the intent of fixing them. In my question sessions with bad dudes of the
juvenile underworld, I heard each screaming,
I am somebody! I am a life! I am not a case file in your
file cabinet! I had feelings too deep for you to understand because you have no
desire to dig deep into my soul and find out what makes me tick! We had a saying in
the Juvenile Hall, we could tell how tough a kid really was by how long he cried
at night!
Last night, I had a problem finding
a comfortable position for my arthritic body.
On many of those nights there is a parade of tough hombres that marches
through my brain, there is Fritz, Ted, Swan, Lon and Dennis. There is Michael, Larry, Dennis, Charlie, and
the list goes on. I wonder if any of
them found that rainbow.
Tune in tomorrow for the rest of the
story, but then again perhaps you do not want know the rest of the story!
Blessings,
Gramps
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