Today, I had reason to be very proud of my son. Because of his situation in life (ending up in Colorado for 6 weeks every summer) he didn’t get a chance to go to Boy Scout camp. At camp, they help the boys earn an Eagle requirement merit badge that you also need for the rank of First Class: Swimming. Since Dave is stuck until he earns this, and since there are almost zero opportunities to work on this outside of camp, he was getting frustrated. To get just about any merit badge, you have to perform a list of serious requirements in the presence/under the supervision of someone recognized by the BSA as a qualified mentor.

Deniese happened to see swimming classes were being offered by the YMCA at the tech school in Lowell. Dave already knew how to swim pretty well, but it gave him a chance to earn his badge under qualified tutelage, so we signed him up. One of the requirements was that Dave had to swim 150 yards, which worked out to be about 6 pool lengths. Today was his last class session, and he had three of the merit badge requirements left, so he had to do them all. First was his class, about an hour of swimming instruction. Then, after he was good and tired, he had to swim that 150 yards. I could see at the end of the first length he was ready to give up. It was a lot harder than he thought he could do. But he free floated for a bit, gathering his strength back up, and pushed himself another pool length. Then another. Soon, he had only one left to do! With prompting from the mentor, he made the last trip down the side. He had done what he thought he was unable to do.

It made me think of two people: Abraham, and myself. Abraham had great faith, and he got a son from God. God then asked him to offer his son as a sacrifice. I personally don’t think God ever intended Abraham to really offer his son, and I also personally don’t think God didn’t know how much faith Abraham had. I think God wanted Abraham to know how strong his faith was. As for myself, I’ve been writing bulletins for almost 2 years now, something I never did anywhere else I ever attended. If you had said “Randy, you will be writing up bulletins and serving the church in Massachusetts for years” when I first got here, I would have said you were crazy. I would have looked at the effort, and told myself there was no way I could do it. But Mr. Mo thought otherwise. He thought I could do it, asked me to do it, and he had confidence in me. Even after I started, I thought to myself that I could never keep it up, that I would constantly stumble and make mistakes, but Mr. Mo said no, Randy, keep on going. With prompting from a mentor of my own, I’ve been making laps up and down my own pool of life, doing what I never thought I could do but someone else could see in me. Not only that, but I suspect Mr. Mo knew I would grow in faith, like Abraham, and isn’t that what elders are supposed to encourage us to do?

Many people encouraged Dave. I did, of course. Deniese signed him up and came to cheer him on. The instructor believed in him. It was great, and now it’s a hurdle that he can look at and say yes, I can conquer that! But what came next is really what the topic is today. One of Dave’s requirements was to jump in the pool, fully clothed, and use his clothes as a flotation device. He had to take off his pants, tie the legs closed, trap air inside them, and float. He got dressed, came out, went to the pool’s edge, and halted. He didn’t want to jump in. It seemed wrong to him. If someone was really drowning, he would jump right in, but getting your clothes all wet was something he had been taught not to do, so he had to overcome the psychological block. I explained to him that when a policeman arrived at an accident scene, it was hard to stop from staring at twisted, mangled bodies. They are taught to jump right in and do whatever they can, ignoring the horror and seeking the good they can do, prying out bodies and stopping people from bleeding their lives away. Dave did get over his own block, and managed to float around, but it got me thinking.

Sometimes we come on people who, in a spiritual way, have been in an accident. But it’s no accident! Their lives are twisted and mangled, with divorce or substance abuse or plain old bad habits. We have to teach ourselves not to stop and stare at the horror they have inflicted on their lives. We need not to throw up our hands and say “Sinner! You are going to hell!” Instead, we need to be willing to pry their soul out of there, help them to stop the sin, and put them back together. Dave overcame his block by practice, and looking at the big picture. Is it any different for us?

Randy