Hey Gang: I call them
the empty-eye-syndrome generation. When
I look into their eyes I see no vision, no joy, no hope. Rabbi Cahn, in his monthly letter to his
spiritual family, wrote the following:
“Imagine you’re on a
plane that’s about to leave and someone sits down next to you. You get to
talking with him and he asks you where you’re going, and you tell him. And then you ask him where he is going, and
they answer, “I’m here to go anywhere. I
have no destination. I’m just here to
leave the airport.” Would that not be
ridiculous? Virtually no one gets on a
plane just to leave somewhere; they get on a plane to go somewhere! “
His name was Teddy
Stoddard, and this was his first day in Mrs. Thompson’s fifth grade class. She started her first day of this new class
in the same way she started every year by telling the class she loved each one
of them and her heart’s desire was that all would do well and grow up to be
very successful people.
But this year she made
her speech with tongue in check for she knew that she had a boy named Teddy, that
she had watched the year before and noticed he did not play with the other
children, his clothes were messy, and he constantly needed a bath. Add to this, Teddy could be very unpleasant.
Teddy lived up to his
reputation and soon settled into his norm of unpredictable, usually negative
behavior to the point that Mrs. Thompson enjoyed placing “F’s” on his failed
papers.
And then one day, she
had reached her wits end and knew she could not endure this young lad’s
behavior one more day, but before expelling him from her class she went to the
office and spent several hours going through Teddy’s record.
She discovered, in
first grade the teacher wrote: “Teddy is a bright child with a ready laugh,
does his works well and has good manners.”
In second grade she read, “Teddy is an excellent student, well-liked by
his classmates, but troubled because his mother has terminal cancer”. In third grade, it stuck out in very bold
print. “His mother’s death has been very
hard on him and his father does not seem to take much interest in him”. His fourth-grade teacher wrote: “Teddy, is
with-drawn and doesn’t show much interest in school, has few friends and often
sleeps through class.
After reading the
record Mrs. Thompson’s-heart was filled with shame and felt even worse when her
students brought her Christmas gifts wrapped in beautiful paper and Teddy
brought a bracelet with missing stones and a half- filled bottle or perfume, in
a brown paper bag. The children laughed
but Mrs. Thompson stood and put the broken bracelet on and a dab of the perfume
on and thanked Teddy for his kindness. After
class Teddy went up and said to her, she smelled just like his mom. She said, she cried for an hour after Teddy
had gone home.
The story of Teddy Stoddard is one that is very special to
me, for I have seen this story repeated a thousand or more times in my years of
providing a shirt-tail for the Teddy’s to grab hold of. I do not want to leave the story here, for
the rest of the story is a perfect example of God’s promise that - if we are
willing to take up our cross daily and reach out to a hurting person, God will
richly bless our efforts.
I pray you will tune into the next Gramp’s blog and see a
real live miracle take place in the life of a young lad who was like the guy on
the airplane – he just did not know where he was going.
Blessings,
Gramps
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