June 20, 2008
Counsel
A diffidently pleasant 14-year old boy lives in our neighborhood. He attends a prep school. He runs seven miles a day.
He is writing a novel and is currently up to 200 pages. It has a scene where a young man who rarely if ever attends church goes, instead, and hears a sermon that enables him to make a difficult and productive decision about a crisis. The young novelist asked me to talk with him about such a setting and to suggest a possible text a preacher might use that could so affect the hearer. We did that.
He doesn’t go nor has he ever himself gone to church anywhere, nor does his father, a single parent. I asked him if he has a Bible for the text I had suggested and had read to him. He said Yes, that he reads it daily, is now in Matthew, had started last Christmas with Genesis. I refrained from suggesting to him perhaps better ways to read the Bible. Maybe one day when I start reading it more often myself, I will.
It recalled for me a time many years ago when a student where I was a college chaplain said to me, Reverend, I want to be saved. I gave him in response a short discourse about the proper use of the word Reverend. We never talked about his salvation. In the meanwhile, something like what I suspect may be maturity has crept up on my blind side.
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