I spent the decade of the fifties learning to be a kid. Adjusting to being the middle child and learning what life as kid meant in my family and my neighborhood. A time of learning who I was. At the risk of being too arrogant I going to say I did a pretty good job of being a kid. But so did most of my generation.
The sixties for me was when I learned how to be a teenager. I learned how to expand my horizons outside of my family and neighborhood. A time of learning what the world was, and what my place in the world would be. The sixties was a great time when Rock-n- Roll was coming into it’s prime.
The seventies was a time when I learned to be an adult. I learned how to be a husband. I learned what it meant to responsible for providing for others. A time to learn what an adult should do. I’m not sure that I did as well being an adult as I did being a kid. I was competing with people that had been adults for years and I was just learning. The curve was steep.
The eighties for me was spent learning to be a father. Learning how to develop more than just myself. I learned how to be a leader. How to instruct others to improve themselves. I learned how to deal with difficult issues that had to be solved with patience and persistence. The eighties for me was also when I had to deal with serious issues like the death of my brother, my father, and a very close friend.
The nineties for me I learned about change. I learned how to develop myself and adapt to my daughter becoming an adult and my parents not being with me. I had to deal with changes you don’t choose. It’s like having to hit the fastball, curve, slider, and change up. There was a lot of guessing at what to swing at and what to take.
In the next century I had to learn how to be a grandfather. How to be a father-in-law. How to deal with relationships that are different from what I previously learned. I had to learn new careers. I had to learn different places to live and adjust to unplanned events.
Now I’m learning perhaps the most important lesson of them all. I’m learning to be satisfied with whatever is next. Through all of these phases of my learning I can say that I had the best instructor possible. The Holy Spirit has been a constant help to me through it all. He has never forsaken me, nor has He ever not been there to comfort me. My learning has not always been a complete success. In fact, I’ve learned plenty of things I shouldn’t have learned. But Jesus has been with me through it all. If you need an instructor as faithful as what I have had call on his name today. He’s not through with me yet, but I bet he has time for you.
