The Outcast and the Child

Who changed your life? Who went far beyond helping you, encouraging you, enabling you? Who took you where you could have never gone by yourself? Who had the power to unlock the door that had no key?

It was 6^th grade. I wasn't popular, athletic, or good looking. I was fat. I didn't know it, but I had an incredible teacher. Mr. Brooks was a negro. Now it would be disrespectful to identify him that way, but truthfully, I had no idea that race made a difference, and I didn't think of him as anything but as my teacher. I also had no idea how hard it would be a man teaching elementary school, how hard it would be to one of about a half dozen African American families in a white small town, or how it would hurt to hear the whispered jokes that stopped—or should have stopped—when he came into the room. Different times in some ways, but in others, much the same. People—struggling, lonely, afraid—trying to find their way. Some of those around them make the journey much harder. Most simply don't care. And a few make it much better. I don't know whether Mr. Brooks did what he did for me because he was a good teacher or a good man, or both.

It was simple, unplanned. It was recess, or maybe after school. A portion of our school was a century old, and had a cloak room where we kept our jackets and lunches. I was alone in there—not surprising—when Mr. Brooks came in with another man. A gracious man, Mr. Brooks introduced us. He said, “This is Lee. He's my best student” Until that moment, I had no idea that I was anyone. I became a person that day. I was someone. Mr. Brooks didn't just teach me, he transformed me from how I saw myself into who I really was. I've spent my life trying to live up to what he spoke and do for others what he did for me.

It was simple, unplanned. It was a Children's Chat at a small church. I was talking with the kids, interacting. I had a point to make—long since forgotten—but giving the children a chance to talk, too. Sebastian wanted to speak about his grandfather's death. I was concerned; I knew we could quickly go to things very uncomfortable, but I let him go ahead. His point—never forgotten—was that God gave his grandfather permission to go to heaven. Whole books of theology and hours of evangelical preaching could not have better expressed Sebastian's statement. He took me where my more “sophisticated” understanding never could.

Both were examples of the Jesus method. In the beginning of His ministry, He is recorded as simply saying to Simon, later renamed Peter, “Follow me, and I will make you a fisher of men.” Simon left everything behind immediately, and followed. And three years later, at Pentecost, Simon Peter became a fisher of men.

Mr. Brooks' words allowed me to fulfill a human potential, to better utilize a gift already present. Jesus, though, does something much more. He said, “I will make you...” He didn't say, “I see your potential. Be all you can be.” But Jesus' words awoke a longing, a hope, to be something entirely different, to go where no one can go unless taken by God Himself. Jesus was saying, as He spoke to Sebastian and through him, as He spoke to Simon and through him, “I give you permission to follow Me. I will take you as you are and I will re-make you. You long to be with God and to part of what He is doing and to used by Him. Follow me. Copy Me. Be filled by Me. Obey Me. Die with Me. And you will be remade, reborn as a son of God.”

Have you ever heard the Gospel? Not the parts about forgiveness and Hell, as important as they are—but the really good news of what you are permitted to do, and what He does in return. YOU MAY follow Jesus; YOU MAY be with Him; YOU MAY leave your old life behind. By His power, YOU CAN be remade, I will do it; YOU CAN be useful to the Living God, I will do it. He is giving you the same opportunity He gave Peter: permission to follow Him and the promise to be remade to be like Him.

If you haven't heard before, you've heard now. The Living God, creator and ruler of the universe gives you permission to be with Him; not for Him to part of your life, but for you to part of His. Good news. Excellent news. Superior, life-changing news. He opens the locked door that has no key.