Hershey's in my Pocket

As I sit in McAlister's, I reach into my right back pocket and notice something sticky.  Like pudding.  Flabbergasted, I have to lick whatever it is to find out what happened to my jeans.

What did I discover?  The bite-size Hershey bar my friend gave me at church this morning has, through the day, melted and burst from its wrapper, oozing out of my pocket through the hole that all jeans seem to come with nowadays.

The irony here is that I hope to one day be like Dean Martin.  No, not that Dean Martin, the one from my home church who was the kindest and most lucid man I have ever met.

He always had peppermints or gum or butterscotch for kids, but he only gave you some after you talked to him for a while.  When I was younger, we always talked about Texas Longhorn athletics, as he kept up with them all even until he fell asleep for the last time.

Seriously, at 98 he knew without any announcement that it was my last Sunday at home before going to college.  I had actually been avoiding him, not wanting to break his heart by telling him I was going to Texas A&M.  But he caught me anyway, and so I told him, "Dean, I'm going down to College Station.  I'm gonna be an Aggie."

Ya know what he says?  "Well... I hear they have a good school down there, so you go get an education and come back and repent later."

NINETY-EIGHT YEARS OLD!  Sweetest man ever.  He cried when I did a 5th grade report on his life as a local lawyer.

So you see why I want to be like Dean.  I hope to be the guy who takes interest in engaging the younger generations and then reminds them to enjoy the little things like a peppermint or chocolate.  Sounds creepy, I know, but just trust me...

And now, sitting here with melted chocolate all through my pocket, I consider it a lesson for later in life: don't give the kids chocolate on a hot day; stick with butterscotch.

Most importantly, however, build the relationship.

"All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.  The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass.  The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever."--Isaiah 40:6-8

Like a Hershey bar in my right back pocket, all of this will fade, even butterscotch.  The part that matters is that I don't just retire and get ready to die (even metaphorically in Aggieland, since technically my class is "dead"): I move with intentional initiative to engage the younger and create more than superficial relationships with them.

Over and over again in the Scripture, the burden to initiate action is given to the elder and to the man: I am relatively the former and literally the latter, so if I have no new relationships before I leave this town then the responsibility lies on me for the absence of joy it would create.  I would deny myself youthful joy, and deny them whatever nuggets of wisdom God has given me during my seeming eternity in College Station.

Regardless of how different we are in age, every single human being that I encounter is an immortal being.  We will all outlast this material world.

So keep that in mind next time you get to talk to someone.  Whether eight or 98, whether or not you like or dislike them, everyone has the dignity of being made by God, and we as Christ followers have the charge to regard them by what they suffer--much as we regard Christ by the cross.