“Someday I’m going to…”

Many people in my congregations and neighborhood have been celebrating milestones lately. If you read the local newspapers, you’ll see announcements about birthdays and anniversaries of many, many “golden agers” who have beautiful stories to tell. Maybe yours is one of them!

Sometimes we take these experienced people for granted. I think we rob ourselves of potential wealth of experience if we do not look at their lives and try to determine just what, exactly, it is that we could learn from them.

An exercise I like to engage young people in is this: I ask them to identify someone whom they admire. This person must be several decades older than my class members are. Most often, teens choose a grandparent. Sometimes, though, it is a political icon or sports figure or entertainment celebrity whom they choose. I ask the youth to share the names of and their relationships to their lifestyle “hero” with the others in the exercise. Often, this sharing will cause classmates to say, “Ooh, I want that one on my list, too!”

We have to be careful in this exercise. Many of our “heroes” have lives that are not completely exemplary. If we look at our Bible heroes, we will find the same. Jacob tried to steal his brother’s rightful inheritance. Sarah was very cruel to her servant Hagar the Egyptian. David had an affair with a married woman. All were less than perfect, yet all had wonderful qualities that we might want to emulate. This is the point of the hero discussion with teenagers.

Once they get past the giggling about grey hair and such (for a response to that, read Proverbs 16:31), kids can come up with quite a great list of attributes they would like to have, and skills they would like to acquire. They will tell about a grandmother who bakes the best cookies — and how they want to learn how to bake them, too. They will tell about the next door retired carpenter who still creates beautiful furniture pieces in his garage — and how they want to learn how to finish wood, too. They will tell about that lady who sits in the park crocheting blankets for the homeless shelter patrons, and how they want to learn how to crochet, too. They will tell about the man around the corner who reads stories to the children in the library — in both English and Spanish, and how they want to learn a second language, too.

My kids then begin imagining how they will be living when they are the same age as their heroes are now. Will they have saved money? Will they be well-traveled? Will they have read the classics and know the poetry? Will they have friends in a variety of places? Will their social calendars be full of interesting activities and events in which they can participate as accomplished players?

More importantly, will they have a faith strong enough to get them through the same kinds of trials and tribulations that molded their heroes into the admirable characters that they are? Will they have avoided some of the moral and ethical traps that snared even our Bible heroes? Will they have learned the stories and verses and psalms that will challenge them and give them courage and comfort? Will they have learned to live with their own shortcomings and to celebrate exploring their gifts? Have they become the person they hoped they would be?

And, the most important question to ask of all of us on this life journey: When will you start?