JUST A YOUNG MAN!

“Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” (I Timothy 4:12)

At present, the eldest person in our small congregation at First Assembly of God of Framingham is Ken Lavers.  Ken will be 83 next month.  Ken loves to tell everyone who will listen that he worked at Dennison Manufacturing Company for over forty years.  Ken also loves to recount his move from inner city Boston to Wayland in 1951 when Wayland was a small farming community.  Ken seems obsessed with people’ ages.  He considers anyone under age 70 “young” and (no exaggeration) Ken must say the phrase “just a YOUNG man!”  at least ten times over the course of a typical Sunday morning!  

“You’re a KID!”  Ken says to me, “Just fifty-three...just a KID!”  (Well, I like that!)

In today’s posting, I am writing about someone who really IS “just a YOUNG man!”  This is not his real name, but I’ll call him “Jacques”.  Jacques is a Haitian-American.  (He was born in the U.S.A. but his parents are Haitian nationals.)  Jacques is about to graduate from Marian (Catholic) High School here in Framingham where my wife, Mary Ann, is the Administrative Assistant.  (Mary Ann keeps that whole place running- no kidding!)  Marian has a policy that all students have to complete a certain amount of hours of community service or they cannot graduate.  Recently, Jacques’ mother has had some very serious health problems.  Due to having to spend time at the hospital and having to do other things for his family, Jacques fell way behind in his community service hours.  The principal appealed to Mary Ann for help and asked if there was some volunteer work he could do at our church.  For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been giving Jacques manual labor to do around the church and parsonage (minister’s residence).  Mary Ann supervised Jacques working around the church building on Saturday.  Yesterday was my day off (which I used as a “day on” for manual labor at the parsonage).  Jacques got out of Marian in the early afternoon and I had him doing plenty of “grunt work” with me around the exterior of the parsonage property.

We were both tired and sweaty when I was driving Jacques home.  Have you ever watched the Chris Rock sit-com “Everybody Hates Chris?” on the CW Network?  (That sit-com is aired on Sunday evenings and is pretty good.)  Jacques reminds me a lot of the kid on “Everybody Hates Chris”...he’s just a bit older.  Like many seventeen-year-olds, Jacques talked a mile a minute as we drove.  He was fascinated that I’d been to Haiti twice and that I speak some Haitian Creole.  There’s something about when people get to be around thirty or so that many of them tend to stop discussing religion or politics with people they hardly know, but many teenagers don’t have ANY inhibitions about those subjects.

First, Jacques began on the subject of religion.  He asked  what the church I pastor believes and if we consider ourselves to be “evangelicals”. I told him we DID and I briefly explained what that means.  Jacques announced  to me that although he’s a Roman Catholic he does not believe in Hell.

“People go through Hell on earth,” he confidently exclaimed.

I immediately pointed out that Jesus Christ taught seven times as much about Hell as He did about Heaven.  To my surprise, Jacques said, “I know that”, and then proceeded to give me HIS version of what happens after death...that people either go to Heaven or an “in between” place but nobody goes to Hell.

Next came the politics.  “I can’t WAIT to register to vote and VOTE DEMOCRAT!” he eagerly said.

That didn’t exactly thrill me, but at eighteen, I was a liberal Democrat, so I felt a bit hypocritical about coming down on him too hard.  Jacques didn’t miss a beat,

“George Bush is a MONKEY!”  he said, “either Hillary or Obama will take care of our education or health care!”

Jacques aspires to be a lawyer.  “My mom thinks  maybe I should go into politics!” he said.

There wasn’t time for my thirty minute “Why I’m a Republican and proud of it” speech, but if I spend much more time with this kid it may be forthcoming!

(Incidentally, I never had to give that speech to my daughter Amy. No joke, after she got her first paycheck when she was a supermarket checkout girl in high school and she saw how much was taken out for taxes and union dues she told me as soon as she turned 18 she was registering Republican, AND SHE DID!)

After I got home I stepped into a wonderfully relaxing shower.  I kept thinking about Jacques and the things he had to say.  I guess I’m getting to be an old you know what, because all I kept thinking was “WHY IS YOUTH WASTED ON THE YOUNG?!”