Hope

I left you hanging with my last blog wondering how we fixed the situation with a problem child.  With the remainder of this three part blog, I will attempt to close out that story and tie in the whole theme of hope.

By way of a quick review, I had discovered that, while I was someone who wanted to follow God's Word on forgiveness and show Mercy and Grace, when it came to actually living out these things I wasn't really living up to what I said I believed.  It took a troublesome little boy to reveal this to me and I was just getting ready to share my solution to the problem of "Billy", (not his real name).  


The problem was broader than only myself and it became clear that as Children's Church director, I was going to have to figure out a way for all of the boy's teachers to interact with him and open a path to loving him in Christ.  I spoke to the pastor and brainstormed the situation.  There was something seriously wrong with what was happening here.  It wasn't just that we were having trouble with some child it was that we were not demonstrating the Love of Christ to him in the process of dealing with him.  Something had to change.  


I started wondering if I could deal with the circumstances that he was in.  He had to be feeling hopeless.  In fact I realized that if God held me to the same standard that we were holding this child to, none of us would be able to stand.

If God's compassions were not new every morning, we would be destroyed for each day's sin, even before we could get out of bed in the morning.  Here the prior weeks behavior was held against this child and he was not getting new compassions from us.  To this child we were acting like the wicked slave who, having been shown great mercy by his master and having had his debt forgiven, turns and casts his fellow slave into prison for a minor debt.  This is not to say that we cannot or should not discipline, or correct a child, but that we must seek to find ways to show grace and mercy and be willing to hold out hope for those who have sinned.

The next week I had children's church, and Billy was going to be there.  Just thinking differently would not be enough, I would have to set the stage differently.  I determined to meet with him in the hallway as we walked from the sanctuary back to the room.  


Once I caught up with him I said "Billy, I am really looking forward to having you in class today!  I have a really good lesson planned and I want you to be a part of it.  I think you will really like it, and we are going to do some coloring today too."  That was all I said, but I meant it and it set the tone for class.  


True to form, Billy began to disrupt the class.  He crawled under the table disturbing the other kids and interrupting my lesson before I could even get it started good.  I ignored his behavior as long as I could and finally I said, "Hey Billy, its time to have our lesson, will you take a seat at the table so we can begin."  He looked at me but didn't stop his behavior so I started the lesson.

As I began to speak, he looked up and started to listen.  He moved over and took his seat finally and I was able to finish my lesson with little interruption.  It was a long way from perfect but it was a huge step in the right direction.  Finally someone wanted him in their class, and finally he had motivation to obey.

Hope is something that many people have and it is often a false hope.  Many of Billy's teachers offered him a false hope that they would be pleased with him if he acted right or didn't misbehave.  For Billy this was no hope at all.  He knew he would never be able to live up to the expectations of his teachers so he had decided not to try.  When I let him know that I wanted him in my class room and I was looking forward to spending time with him, I offered him real hope.


This hope wasn't rooted in performance, it was rooted in the grace of God.  As I began to recognize my sin and deal with it, I found that I didn't really hate this boy.  I found a love for him that I didn't even know existed.  God changed my heart towards him and in that new care for him, he experienced the hope that comes only from God.  Billy for the first time saw that God's compassions do not fail and they are new every morning.  


I had many more opportunities to catch him before class and tell him that I was looking forward to having him participate in the learning.  I never again had the level of trouble I had from him before.  Most days he was attentive and participated in the class.  I shared my success with the other teachers and encouraged them to do similar things with him.  Those who put forth a real effort to work with him all saw improved results and began to appreciate him more.


The bottom line is this...I think Billy had a greater impact on me than I ever had on him! But more on that later...

Hope is in the Lord and we are to be like Him.

On my last blog I talked about the need we all have for hope.  I spoke about an experience I had that helped shape some of my thoughts about how to share the love of Christ by ministering Grace to others.  The passage below helped me shape my thoughts during this experience and I want to share this experience with you.

^{Lamentations 3:19} Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.  ²⁰ Surely my soul remembers And is bowed down within me. 2¹ This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope. ²² The LORD'S loving kindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. ²³ They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. ²⁴ "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "Therefore I have hope in Him." ²⁵ The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the person who seeks Him. ²⁶ It is good that he waits silently For the salvation of the LORD.

I am really struggling with how to relate this story and not lose the significance of the principle.  There is a whole heart attitude in this that effects the way we even think about the people around us.  As I suggest in the title, we must become more like Christ if we are to call ourselves Christian at all.  In the very heart attitudes we carry around (even the ones no one ever sees overtly displayed) we must genuinely adopt the Love of Christ and seek to live it out towards others on more than just a surface level.


The problem I had with the child who is at the center of this story, is that I didn't like him.  I could pretend to like him, even love him, but it wasn't in my heart to do it.  I began to realize that this child was exposing something seriously flawed in me.  I could not extend grace to someone I didn't like.  As adults we tend to accept this kind of attitude in ourselves toward those who have offended or angered us.  We don't really see it as a problem, even though Jesus did.


Jesus explains the problem of this lack of forgiveness in the story of the king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves in Matthew 18:23-35.  We find a slave forgiven a great debt who does not honor the king who forgave him by showing the same forgiveness to others.  This is a big deal and it is this same characteristic of God that Lamentations describes and Jesus calls us to emulate.  If it wasn't for God's willingness to show me new mercy every day, how could I stand before Him?  But do I honor God by showing new mercy every day to others?


As regards to the child in question, in my defense, showing grace like that is very difficult to do, humanly speaking.  This child was only a 4 year old but he was a problem.  He was difficult for every teacher he had.  This young man was not only hard to deal with he was disruptive to the class and impossible to ignore.  He would not listen to your instructions, and he created circumstances that routinely forced the other teachers and myself to seek the parents and ask them to take him out.

The worst part was that I found myself not just wanting to avoid the child but actually dreading having him in class.  I even started to dislike him on a personal level.  That was the wake up call that caused me to pull up short.  I was supposed to be a Christian and an educator and this kid was a challenge but not my enemy.  I began to seriously pray for an answer and seek the Lord's help with this situation.

I began to observe more and try to discover what made this child tick.  He was in his own right a difficult child.  There may have been some slight mental handicap or other problem that contributed to his way of doing things, but he was still just a kid, and he needed to know the Lord and be loved.  Then it clicked and I finally began to see the connection.  None of us were living out Lamentations by showing him new compassion, or Matthew by showing him true grace.  All the teachers were anticipating trouble from him and holding last week's offences against him.  

Sure enough I began to observe that teachers were saying things like, "Now, Billy, I don't want any trouble out of you today."  and "Billy, I don't want to have to go get your mom today, so make sure you behave."  Then they would proceed to wait for him to mess up and send him out.  He didn't really have to work hard at it to get in trouble either.  They were expecting his behavior to be bad and he never failed to deliver.


But more on that later...