“Where Do We Go From Here

“Where Do We Go From Here?”

Text: Psalm 127

© November 12, 2006 by C. Edward Bowen

Despite what you might think, it’s not easy being a kid. It’s not easy being a child in today’s world. A while back ABC News reported that every week in our country more than 50 newborn babies are abandoned at birth or tossed into dumpsters. Every day in our world there are about 30,000 children who die from malnutrition or from diseases that are entirely preventable, but they die because they don’t have access to the kind of medical care that we pretty much take for granted. And they estimate that every day in the United States about 160,000 kids stay home from school because they’re afraid of being bullied in the classroom or on the playground. It’s not easy being a child in today’s world.

The other day I was going through some boxes in my basement, and I came across something that I hadn’t seen in quite a while – my high school yearbook. And as I flipped through the pages, I realized that next year will mark 25 years since I graduated from high school. 25 years! I couldn’t believe that. So if you know of any good retirement homes, let me know – because I guess I’m going to be needing one sooner than I realized!

But as I turned the pages in that yearbook, all kinds of memories about my school days came back to me. No, my school in Bethel Park wasn’t perfect – there was the occasional fight that would break out in the cafeteria, and everyone once in a while some of the “bad kids” would sneak into the bathroom to smoke – but in general it seemed like the biggest problems that the teachers and principals had to deal with were kids chewing gum in class and running in the hallways.

But nowadays many kids in our area have to walk through metal detectors before they’re let inside the school, to make sure that they’re not carrying knives or guns. There are security cameras in the hallways and in the classrooms. Security guards roam the hallways. Drug-sniffing dogs patrol the lockers. And so you can’t help but ask: How did we get where we are today? Or, I suppose, the even more important question is: Where do we go from here? In other words, since we can’t go back and change whatever has happened in the past that has got us to where we are now, we need to ask ourselves: What can we do now to change the way that things are, to change things for the better?

A few weeks ago a lawmaker out in Wisconsin came up with an answer to that question. He thinks that since so many schools have gotten to be such dangerous places, the only option left is to arm the teachers – and he didn’t say that as a joke: he was serious. I guess if that lawmaker had his way, when the kids at Crafton Elementary walk into Mr. Priore’s music class, they’d find him standing there with a rifle slung over his shoulder, or when they walk into Mrs. McGrath’s library, she’d have a pistol strapped to her hip. If you’re a kid, seeing your teacher armed with a gun certainly might make you think twice before you chewed gum in class or had an overdue library book. But is that the answer?

Where do we go from here? In verse 3 of the psalm that we heard today, Psalm 127, it said: “Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” One of the unfortunate facts about the Old Testament is that some parts of it are kind of sexist, like here where it says that “sons are a heritage from the Lord.” What about daughters – aren’t they a heritage, aren’t they a gift from the Lord as well? Indeed they are. Despite the sexist language of that verse, what I believe the psalm is saying is that children – sons and daughters – are to be seen as a blessing. And so when it comes to answering the question “Where do we go from here?”, I believe the first step is to get more and more families and people to realize that – to realize that children are a blessing, a blessing that God has given to us.

But unfortunately all too many people look at children as being a burden, a burden that they don’t want to have to deal with. It’s like over in the Asian country of Cambodia. An uncle and his nephew were riding on a motorbike out in the countryside. When they came to this one small village, the man stopped to get gas. But when it came time to pay – the man owed about three dollars – the man said that he had forgotten his wallet at home. So he asked the gas station owner if it would be OK if he left his nephew there at the gas station as collateral until he went home and got some money and came back. The gas station owner said that would be OK, so the uncle drove off and his nephew stayed behind. But guess what? The uncle never came back. In fact, more than a year has gone by and neither that uncle nor the child’s parents have ever shown up to collect him – they abandoned him there at that gas station because apparently they figured that having a child was a burden, a burden that they didn’t want to have to bear.[1]

Now, admittedly, that’s a rather extreme situation. But even though most families here in the United States don’t physically abandon their children like that, many families do abandon their children in another sort of way. Many families abandon their children by adopting the attitude where they basically say to their kids, “I just don’t have the interest or the energy to teach you about right and wrong. I just don’t have the interest or the energy to help you figure out what life is all about. So why don’t you just go out and figure out things for yourself.” And in a lot of households today, that’s what’s going on. You have kids trying to raise themselves, with little or no guidance from their families. And so when kids mess up, when kids do the wrong things because they were never taught the right things in the first place, is it really their fault? Or is it the fault of their families that have essentially abandoned them?

For instance, years ago when I first became a minister, I took a group of 4^th through 6^th graders on a weekend retreat up to Camp Crestfield. And I still remember that while we were sitting there eating dinner, I asked one of the kids to check and see if the mashed potatoes were still warm. What I expected the kid to do was to lightly touch the outside of the bowl to see if it was hot or not. But instead, what the kid did was he took his hand and plunged into the bowl of mashed potatoes and a second later said, “Yeah, they’re still warm.”

Now, what you need to understand is that that kid had absolutely no idea that what he did was wrong. That kid had absolutely no idea that it’s not right to stick your hand into a bowl of food that other people are going to eat from. It turned out that his family had never bothered to teach him that lesson.

And so the question remains: Where do we go from here? Well, in the first verse of the psalm that we listened to, it said: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” In other words, unless God is a part of our houses, unless God is a part of our homes, unless God is a part of our families, we’re never going to have the kind of world that God wants us to have.

But the problem is that God isn’t a part of so many families. A study came out a couple weeks ago – maybe you read about it – where they found that when Americans are asked, “Are you certain that God exists?”, nearly half of all people said “no.”[2] And so, based on that study, it probably isn’t too far off base to say that nearly half of all children in the country today are growing up in families where they’re not so sure that there is a God.

And among families that do believe in God, unfortunately quite often families have a negative image of what God is like. It’s like over in England. Over the years they’ve set up tens of thousands of security cameras in cities across the country so authorities can keep an eye on people in the hopes of keeping the crime rate down. But recently officials there have added a new kind of a camera – a camera that not only can watch you, but that can also yell at you when you do something wrong. And so, for instance, if one of those cameras catches you dropping a gum wrapper on the sidewalk, a voice can boom out and let you know that you’re being watched.[3]

And sadly, that’s what many people think God is like. They think of God as someone who’s always snooping around, looking over our shoulders, just waiting for us to mess up so that God can jump out and yell at us and punish us. But if we read the Bible, we discover that that’s not what God is all about. Instead, if we read the Bible, we discover that God is first and foremost a God who loves us, a God who cares about us. If we read the Bible, we discover that God is a God who wants this world to be the best that it can possibly be – to be the best that it can possibly be not only when it comes to churches, but also when it comes to our families, our schools, our communities.

I recently heard about something really great that happened over in Wilkinsburg. Wilkinsburg, as you might be aware, is a rather poor community, and their school district is on the verge of bankruptcy. And so one of the things they decided to do to save money was to eliminate all music classes – no choirs, no bands, no music of any kind – all of it was cut. But when that happened, the Second Presbyterian Church in Wilkinsburg, a tiny little congregation, smaller than ours, stepped up and said, “That’s not right. God wants something better than that for the children of this community.” And so what that church did was they worked out a partnership between themselves, the school district, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to restore music programs as optional after-school activities in the Wilkinsburg School District.

And so that brings us back to the question: Where do we go from here? When it comes to Crafton United Presbyterian Church, when it comes to the local schools, when it comes to this community, when it comes to the families that live in the community, where do we go from here? As we look toward the future, what is it that God is wanting to do?

In many ways in recent years this church, Crafton Elementary School, and many families in the area have worked together to try and make life better for the children of this area. Two nights ago, on Friday night, we had well over 100 elementary school kids here for a dance. Through Youth Club on Wednesdays, over 50 children have a place where they can eat together, play together, sing together, and learn together. Through Adventure Group on Tuesdays, more than a dozen kids come each week not only for games and crafts, but also to learn about what it means to serve other people. For instance, in a couple weeks the Adventure Group kids will be delivering 25 large, heavy-duty bath towels to the homeless shelter on the Northside, bought with money that they raised at the Haunted House. And in other ways the church has worked with the school to help identify children and families in the area that have needed help getting school supplies, winter clothing, and food.

But even though a lot of great things have happened and are happening, where do we go from here? I’m not entirely sure about the answer to that question, but I believe that as our church and the schools and the families in the area talk together and work together, we’ll eventually see more clearly what it is that God is wanting us to do.

For instance, we have a lot of activities for elementary school students. But even though we have a Sunday night group for older kids, we tend to lose of lot of our Youth Club kids after they graduate from 6^th grade, and they don’t join that Sunday night group that we call PYC. What can we do to do a better job of reaching out to the teenagers in the area to provide them with safe, positive activities that they can be a part of?

Or what can we do to do a better job of being a resource to the families that live in the community? A lot of families do believe in God, and they want God to be a part of their children’s lives. But at times they feel all alone in what they’re trying to do. What could we do in terms of getting families together so that they could encourage each other and share ideas with each other about how to be the families that God wants them to be?

Or what can we do as a church to be an even better partner with the local schools? Like that church in Wilkinsburg that helped to do something about a problem that they had there, what are the issues and challenges in our schools? How can we do a better job of being in dialogue with the teachers and the PTA so that together we can do what God wants to be done?

It’s not easy being a child in today’s world. But the good news is that God cares about children, God cares about families, God cares about all people. So where do we go from here? Together, let us dare to dream big and trust that God wants to be at work for what is good – for what is good in our church, for what is good in our schools, for what is good in our families, for what is good in our world. Together, let us dare to dream big and trust God to lead us on to what God is calling us to do.