Blog@GraceJunction

As we walked down the road to the café, the young man with me started revealing more facts about his life. His father was an elder in the church and was a man of outstanding testimony. While he grew up, he always looked up to his father and proudly said to himself that one day he would become like his father.

This is the experience of most boys while they are still growing. Somehow I feel that most fathers have let down their kids. I mean, they have not kept up to their children’s expectations and should I frankly say, they have not kept up to God’s expectations in what they teach, in the way they live, in their love, their faith, and their purity. I am not being judgmental. I include myself in this ineffective league of fathers, who have not kept up to the standards as God expects all fathers to keep. The result: a generation of renegade and drifting youngsters, who lack proper role models to look up to or emulate.

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I met this brilliant guy at one of the camps organized by a leading organization working among students. After a talk on teen issues, he came to me wanting to discuss a few things. As always, I was careful to be as friendly and relaxed as possible so that he didn’t get uncomfortable, even faintly.

He said he was spending a couple of hours everyday on the Internet and he somehow wanted to reduce it drastically. He tried several means but failed. I asked him his principal activity on the Internet and he told me that it was emailing and chatting. He said, he was not at all performing well on the academic front and that he could not overcome temptations.

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My friend’s son has been nagging his dad since several days to buy him a mobile handset. I think the boy is justified to an extent. My friend had promised to buy his son the handset, provided he got a first class in his matriculation. Now my friend regrets, why he didn’t put a higher goal of say, a distinction. The boy’s classmates all flaunt their gizmos, just outside the school campus, since they are not permitted to take a handset inside. The boy feels Jurassic and now he also feels cheated.

He is close to me and one day he asked me to talk to his dad about this issue, and so I called his dad to the downtown café as the boy and all were very dear to me. My friend was dot on time as usual. There is a lot to learn from the secular market place too. My friend smiled at me, as if saying, I knew you would be late. Before getting into any other talk and also to avoid his teasing me on my being late, I pounced on him with my concern, as if that were the greatest need of the hour. Surely it was, at that time.

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