Tom Tozer and Bill Black pose for a portrait Monday, March 28, 2016 at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.Our hearts have been broken – again – by the fallout from racial strife in our country. Yet we tire of “moments of silence”; we want more from our church and community leaders; we strive for something we can do that will make a difference.
Perhaps an answer lies in the service we provide to others, the understanding we search for through others. Volunteers of all ages build houses for the homeless. They collect shoes for the shoeless. They glean farmers’ fields for the hungry. They ring kettle bells for those less fortunate. They read stories to children and play games and do arts and crafts with the elderly. This is a purposeful way to spend time – quality time that otherwise might be frittered away in idle activity – sharing it with others.
A father told us recently that he tutors at-risk teenagers to help them prepare for exams. His students comprise all ethnicities and backgrounds. He recalls his very best success story: A young gang member wanted to pull himself up and out of his hopeless lifestyle. He agreed – even signed a contract – to attend weekly tutoring sessions. His grade point average was rock bottom, somewhere around 0.0006. After three years of hard work and commitment on everyone’s part, this ex-gang member graduated from high school with a full academic scholarship to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
Those kinds of transformative stories bring us together and create goosebumps. The fact is, there are countless potential life-changing stories out there if only there were enough people willing and able to volunteer their time. Tutors, builders, gleaners, bell ringers – civil servants all – can be any age. The only qualification is that caring must be part of a person’s DNA.
So enter your teenager. How many of us dads get irked at the time our teenagers waste? They may be staring glassy-eyed at the TV. They may be mentally numbed by a video game. They may be hypnotized by the characters dancing across their phone/pad/pod window. At the same time, they may be bellyaching that “there’s nothing to do around here.”