Risk Journal #1

At our youth retreat last weekend we hoped and prayed for the youth to know Jesus in a deeper, real way. Not the Jesus of a story book or of thoughtless belief, but the Jesus that intervenes, answers prayer, redeems, forgives and is worthy of giving our entire lives. So as we closed on Sunday morning we gave them a chance to make their own journals, "risk journals." The risk journals are intended to be a space to record prayers, hopes, needs and the good risks they take to see that Jesus is real.

When we do something like this I generally don't expect much follow through from the youth. Either the journals get misplaced, or skateboarding and TV become far more interesting than writing in a book. I've tried it before with some middling success - after all, it probably just feels like more homework. Cynical I know, but probably realistic too.

On Wednesday, one of the boys' entries brought me to tears. Joseph lives across the street with his younger brother, baby sister and mother and has been in the midst of a tense family situation for years. Their mother is in process of divorcing the younger brother's biological father, a father figure to both boys. That father lives less than a block away but they are forbidden to see him. You can imagine the pain there must be.

And so Joseph filled the first three pages of his journal with reflections - emotive, raw and vulnerable. He talked about the sadness and anger he felt being back at home after a weekend in the mountains on retreat. His mother told him to "shut up bitch." That if he wanted food, "he could make his own damn food," which he'd do but for the fact that the pantry is bare. She whacked him with the wooden spoon for talking back. She told him that if he didn't get up at 6 am to watch the baby sister (she herself gets up at 10 am) then he couldn't go out and play later in the day. He wrote about trying so hard to be a good brother and son, only to see it blow up in his face over and over again.

Some of this may be adolescent hyperbole and woe-is-me. Some of it is appropriate, justifiable parental discipline. Some of it feels a bit too harsh (I've never been told to "shut up bitch."). But it's all painful reality for Joseph. It's his life, the life he has to live each day. And it was beautiful, tearfully beautiful, to see him write vulnerably in offering to Jesus. At the end of Joseph's entry he cried out to Jesus for help, declaring his faith that Jesus is real and good. It felt like the leper in Luke 5, or blind Bart inconveniencing Jesus' entry to Jerusalem.

Jesus prove yourself to Joseph. Stop to heal and comfort as you so often do. Demonstrate to him that you alone are worthy for him to give his life to.

And thank you for correcting my realistic, pragmatic cynicism. Please continue to do so.