Memories of a Student

by Ron Nagy

          It is amazing how a simple poem that someone shares with you can take one back forty years, to a place in time that still seems like yesterday. It is like a flashback when you review old photos found in a closet, that opens pages of history that has been sealed by time. Some photos bring back laughs and some photos return us to tears but the one thing photos can not do is bring back time. Yet with the scars of life, thoughts of goodness are interwoven in our minds to hope for a future for our children and their children that will contain photos of only Kodak moments. Each generation must endure its own pain, for it is written "for it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God."

          The poem's concern for our perilous times, is not unfounded with school violence, drugs, bomb threats, along with a society of teenagers who are frustrated, confused, and in the most part, defiant over authority. The poem writer suggests to bring prayer back in school and yet I wonder if that is the real answer.

          I do not question the power of prayer, but its place in the hearts of men and women ..boys and girls on this earth. If we were to legalize school prayer in the school today, where would its place be? Who would present it? How would it be presented, and what kind of prayer would it be? Who would decide? Tough questions today in a pluralistic society. In the photos of my life forty years ago, there were no restrictions on prayer, no arguments. nor challenges about praying. Maybe I was blind, but I do not remember prayer in the school. What I do remember were years of struggle with grades, peer acceptance, maturity and most of all a problem of self control. No real public prayer, just days of authority from teachers, and hard life experiences with classmates, not to mention the clueless nature of who you were or where you were going. The difference back then was a sense of weakness, that still the higher powers had the ability to turn the key and put you in your place. Today, our expressions of freedom has eliminated most consequences, so the pain of growing up is justified by the pain that one can afflict on someone or something else, even at the expense of self destruction. It is the curriculum of self-expression, self motivation, self awarenness. Yet, if one was to be honest, are we not just like the youth today? Have we not hurt people around us with lies? Have we not hurt others by our actions? Have we not claimed righteousness by words of a hypocrite?

          No, there was no real prayer in school, but there was, the power of faith, that only by God's mercy, kept me and many of us from harm's way. What I do see in the photos of my mind, is a mother that taught me how to pray, and my best friend and his family who shared their faith by prayers. Simple actions that took forty years to bloom. Yes, it took me many years to understand prayer, but than again, it is surely "amazing grace" for any of us to stand guiltless in front of a mighty God that is slow in anger, but quick to call his children his own.

          At last, my real prayers do not come in unison with a crowd that has a heart of regrets, but instead, prayers of confession of the soul with no regrets, that by grace, allows me give praises to a personal God. Could the school that taught me pride and worldly excellence, teach me, that by redemption, my contentment is not in what I want, but in what has been given to me?

          Be patient parents, be faithful young ones, for the road ahead may be hard, rocky, full of thorns, but it is a loving, just God who daily uses a rototiller in our lives, to soften the soil in our hearts, so seeds of faith will grow to allow his children to laugh and play despite the circumstances and photos of life. Final exams are coming and the question is... will school prayer give all God's students an A. Our prayers should be that young and old are prepared....for it is God's promise that the lamb will return to school on the last day of the last semester.

          So I share a hymn that was sent to me, not long ago, one which has taught me to laugh and play again... a hymn to share with those you care.