Sad day…I think
August 31, 2004
Yesterday, I dropped my oldest off at school in Pittsburgh, not a four-year college, but a 14-month straight-through when-he’s-done-he-gets-a-job-and-moves-away, never-to-come-home-again affair. We gave him to God when he was a little baby; I’ve got pictures and memories to prove it. When he was 14 months old and the hospital’s own thermometer said that his temperature was 106.9–to this day, I’ve never heard of a person’s temperature being that high–I prayed and told God that we’d given him to God, and that we’d trust God regardless of the outcome. When he came of age, he “asked Jesus into his heart”, and I had the wonderful privilege, about 8 years ago, maybe, of baptizing him.
But he’s not walking with Jesus; his heart seems cold to spiritual things, even as he’s actually gotten warmer toward us over the past year. He’s always been too easily influenced by others, and he made some poor choices as to friends. I have little confidence that that will change soon, and his new roomie had a package of condoms (we used to call them “rubbers”–is that too crude?) on the top of one of the boxes he carried in to the apartment. Am I scared? Heck yeah. He always seems to learn things the hard way, if at all; I fear what junk he’ll dabble in and what consequences he’ll reap.
Further, I’m despairing that I’ve been a semi-failure as a parent. How much responsibility do parents bear when a kid turns out less than we think he should? It ain’t 100%…there’s these things called a “sin nature” and “free will” and the like. It ain’t 0% either, though, not where I come from. I’m sounding like I think he is a lost cause…HE IS NOT. He knows what’s right; he’s not into drugs or drinking, from anything I’ve seen, though if he doesn’t try a beer while he’s in school, I’d be pretty surprised. I hope he’s still a virgin; whether he remains one for the next 14 months is a fair question (gracious, I remember how tough it was when I was in high school, when I was a leader in my youth group, in AWANA, a good obedient son, and it wasn’t easy to say “no” when Linda was ready and rarin’, though I did, by God’s grace). The temptations–or maybe the opportunities–seem greater today, and his spiritual resources aren’t much, and his roomie looks like a hornmeister…icck, I don’t want to think about it.
We gave him to God 18 years ago; time to remember and re-confirm that, I guess…
Yawn…
August 17, 2004
The U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team lost to Puerto Rico and almost got beat by Greece. Whooopee. Perhaps the lesson will be that teamwork and enthusiasm are the right way to play basketball, trumping a bunch of overpaid whining prima donnas. I’m rooting for every U.S. team to win gold–but if the men’s basketball team fails, so what?
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
