The rowdy boy could not help but be noticed by everyone at the Wednesday night church program for kids. He roared. He ran about wildly. He ran into the pillars of the church, physically and spiritually.
The spiritual pillars considered how long he could stay in the program. Maybe, some said, they should tell him to leave, he had disrupted too many activities.
That did not seem like the best solution, but what could be done with such a disruptive child.
As the pendulum swung closer and closer to asking him to leave, one retired man, a carpenter, said, “Let me deal with him.”
The next week he showed up with a handful of wood, some nails, sand paper and a hammer. He made the rowdy boy his personal friend. Together they found a workshop off in a corner. First they did some simple math to see how much the boy knew. Then he pulled out the wood.
He showed the boy how to sling a hammer and hold a nail. By the end of the night the child had not spend much time with the other children, but he had spent time with one grandfatherly figure.
“I had him say some verses to me as we worked,” the carpenter said with a nod to it being a church program.
A homemade birdhouse kit appeared at the close of the evening. “I told him he had to give it to someone,” the carpenter said.
And the boy did. He found someone that week and every week thereafter that they built bird houses.
The carpenter also brought other wood-working projects. Every week, the two went into the make-shift work shop in an unused Sunday School room at the church. Every week, they hammered, sanded and talked.
The child calmed down. He focused on listening when the adults talked. He made it through the rest of the year without anyone wondering if he needed to be sent home.
Eventually he moved into another group and we only saw him in passing. He seemed to be doing fine. He may not have made the top of his class or done anything outstanding, but he stayed involved and his surrogate grandfather encouraged him to take up a sport, to do his work, to come to church.
Time passed. Other students came to the kids’ program on Wednesday evening and except for an occasional sighting as he wheeled up to church on his bike, he disappeared until recently when he walked into a prayer meeting of retirees wearing his uniform. He had just returned from a weekend of practice with the National Guard and a military scalp short hair cut. He came to worship … or to make sure folks saw him in his uniform. He was as proud of it as his former teachers were proud of him.
He said that he met with the pastor of another church every week for a prayer meeting and fellowship time. He had not done as so many young adults do, and fallen away from church. As a child he had come to church alone. As a teen he showed up on his bicycle. As an adult, he walked in by himself.
No parent dragged him into the service or the children’s activities. He just came.
He wanted something, wanted it desperately as his wild, erratic actions screamed years ago. Thanks to a carpenter willing to share what he had, the boisterous boy found what he looked for at church. Pure love. The kind a carpenter gave 2,000 years ago when he simply came to share what he had with the world.
Joan Hershberger can be reached at joanh@everybody.org