Where is your focus?
**Note: There are spoilers in this post. But then the movie came out in 1995, so if you haven't seen it yet... well I don't feel bad...
The movie Dangerous Minds came out when I was in high school. If you haven't seen it, here's the trailer:
Essentially, it's the story of a woman who goes to an inner city school and does whatever it takes to reach the kids in her classroom. But like all of us, there are times that she gets jaded about it. Toward the end of the movie Luann (the teacher) is planning to leave due to the negative things that have happened - one student left the school because she was pregnant and the school didn't want her to stay despite her intelligence, two boys were pulled out of school by their mother who didn't think what they were learning was important, and another boy was shot due to a fight and because the principal didn't listen to what was going on because the boy didn't knock when he came to his office.
It's easy to see why Luann is disillusioned. As I watched this movie for umpteenth time last night, a couple of quotes stuck out to me.
"You're not going to let me get away with not learning my vocabulary right?"
The boy who asks this question really isn't asking about vocabulary. He's asking - you still care right? You still want me to succeed right? Because no one else does, and I need you to care. This is a question that people ask in a lot of different ways. I recently read a story about a young man who called his youth pastor in the middle of the night and told the youth pastor that he had sex that night with his girlfriend. The youth pastor took him to breakfast and talked with him about what happened, and at the end of the conversation the young man told the youth pastor, I didn't really have sex with my girlfriend - I just wanted to know how you would react if I did. Now first of all - that's a sick game. But it is what kids want to know - you still care right? And people in general want to know that too. But the ways we ask are not direct - we ask about things like vocabulary instead, though the real question is much deeper.
The second quote happens as Luann is telling the students she is leaving, and they are asking why... this is one students response to hearing her focus on those students who aren't there anymore...
"You sad about Durrell and Callie and Emilio and Lionel, but we're here. What about us, huh? None of us make you feel happy? We been working hard and we stayed in school, man. What about us?"
In life, we often focus on those things that don't work out rather than the things that do. We give more energy and attention to the criticism we receive than the encouragement and positive comments. We focus on our failures and forget our successes.
I have mentioned in the past that I was reading this book called Sticky Faith. When I saw one of the authors, Kara Powell, in Atlanta, she began her talk by saying there is no silver bullet to give kids faith that lasts past high school. There is nothing we can do to reach every youth. Some youth will walk away from their faith. Some will never come back. All we can do is our best - and when they walk away, we give them to God. We can reach out and encourage them to come back, but it has to be their choice. We cannot choose for them. We can only love them. Jesus is their savior, not us. And it is their choice whether they accept him or not.
And even if you aren't a youth pastor, there are people in your life that you want to make that choice. But you can't make it for them either. We plant the seeds but it is only by the grace of God and the choice of the individual that the seeds grow. So we pray, and we love, and sometimes our hearts break. But we have to keep moving forward, keep loving, keep praying and entrust them and their choices to God. Otherwise we might miss the people who need us and are right in front of us waiting, asking us if we still care about them.
The movie Dangerous Minds came out when I was in high school. If you haven't seen it, here's the trailer:
Essentially, it's the story of a woman who goes to an inner city school and does whatever it takes to reach the kids in her classroom. But like all of us, there are times that she gets jaded about it. Toward the end of the movie Luann (the teacher) is planning to leave due to the negative things that have happened - one student left the school because she was pregnant and the school didn't want her to stay despite her intelligence, two boys were pulled out of school by their mother who didn't think what they were learning was important, and another boy was shot due to a fight and because the principal didn't listen to what was going on because the boy didn't knock when he came to his office.
It's easy to see why Luann is disillusioned. As I watched this movie for umpteenth time last night, a couple of quotes stuck out to me.
"You're not going to let me get away with not learning my vocabulary right?"
The boy who asks this question really isn't asking about vocabulary. He's asking - you still care right? You still want me to succeed right? Because no one else does, and I need you to care. This is a question that people ask in a lot of different ways. I recently read a story about a young man who called his youth pastor in the middle of the night and told the youth pastor that he had sex that night with his girlfriend. The youth pastor took him to breakfast and talked with him about what happened, and at the end of the conversation the young man told the youth pastor, I didn't really have sex with my girlfriend - I just wanted to know how you would react if I did. Now first of all - that's a sick game. But it is what kids want to know - you still care right? And people in general want to know that too. But the ways we ask are not direct - we ask about things like vocabulary instead, though the real question is much deeper.
The second quote happens as Luann is telling the students she is leaving, and they are asking why... this is one students response to hearing her focus on those students who aren't there anymore...
"You sad about Durrell and Callie and Emilio and Lionel, but we're here. What about us, huh? None of us make you feel happy? We been working hard and we stayed in school, man. What about us?"
In life, we often focus on those things that don't work out rather than the things that do. We give more energy and attention to the criticism we receive than the encouragement and positive comments. We focus on our failures and forget our successes.
I have mentioned in the past that I was reading this book called Sticky Faith. When I saw one of the authors, Kara Powell, in Atlanta, she began her talk by saying there is no silver bullet to give kids faith that lasts past high school. There is nothing we can do to reach every youth. Some youth will walk away from their faith. Some will never come back. All we can do is our best - and when they walk away, we give them to God. We can reach out and encourage them to come back, but it has to be their choice. We cannot choose for them. We can only love them. Jesus is their savior, not us. And it is their choice whether they accept him or not.
And even if you aren't a youth pastor, there are people in your life that you want to make that choice. But you can't make it for them either. We plant the seeds but it is only by the grace of God and the choice of the individual that the seeds grow. So we pray, and we love, and sometimes our hearts break. But we have to keep moving forward, keep loving, keep praying and entrust them and their choices to God. Otherwise we might miss the people who need us and are right in front of us waiting, asking us if we still care about them.
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