A few weeks ago I told some friends that things were going eerily well in Homewood. Since then, the Jordan Miles controversy happened, the entire community was snowed in for a week, and three people were shot in my part of Homewood this weekend. Then, today I had a very difficult mentoring time with my mentee. We had lunch with an older kid who I know is not a good influence on him. It was a very awkward clash of influences on his life, and I walked away with the sense that I lost ground on this particular day.
One of the difficult things about the nature of transformation is that it takes so much time. And it is a process... one never "arrives" at tranformation. It will be a never-ending process in both the life of my mentee and in Homewood in general. For that matter, I am also involved in a constant process of transformation. Things seem like they are always up in the air, but I know God is in control. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit is at work in all things in a way that I will never be able to comprehend. That is reassuring, because I know I certainly can't rely on my own devices to generate transformation amidst such challenging circumstances.
1 comment:
Bryan
It seems that transformation is, and always will be, a 'two steps forward, one step back' type of process. We have an active enemy who will always try to thwart our efforts and discourage us.
I'm of the opinion that it will take several generations before true sustainable transformation occurs. The problems that we're dealing with have developed over several generations; it stand to reason that reversing the problems will take at least equally long. That said, we have to start somewhere, and hopefully our efforts will lay the groundwork that others can build on.
John V
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