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Today's Blog Post
As I passed the newspaper around I pointed to the Photo take by Lucas Oleniuk of the Toronto Star...the one that you see above. They stopped their normal teen chatter and waited for their turn to look.
I then asked the group, “What did you see in the photo? What comes first to your thoughts as you looked at this?”
Out of the 12 teens that sat with me, 11 said, “The man lying on the street.”
One teen said, “I saw the face of the man that was beating him…”
First, as a reader of this Blog, you need to know that in this past week Haiti has been shaken to its roots by a horrific earthquake. As many as 200,000 people may have died at this point… but no one knows for sure. Thousands could still be buried below tons of rubble.
This is my Youth Class that has entered my life to keep me young. These are the next generation of amazing people coming up. These are the sharpest minds I have encountered for a long time.
I took the Newspaper again and passed it around the group asking them to now look at the crowd of people standing around the man that did the beating.
Again it was quiet as they each looked for about 10 seconds. They had caught the idea that we were working towards. Carefully they surveyed the photo for clues of what might come next.
One pointed out the man with the white mask on. Another pointed out the look on one man’s face as he was smiling – or laughing as this took place. Everyone had a suggestion and a comment.
‘Travis’ told the group how, in class on Friday at school, they had also looked at the Toronto Star for the story. His group had pointed out to their class an important factor of that newspaper… right across the page from the Haitian horror shots was a large advertisement that was selling Blue Jeans – cheap.
These kids are thinking. The lesson yesterday was all about “Respect” and how we can reach out to others in need in our class at school, in our community and even in our World. With Haiti being on all of our minds, it was definitely about the World.
The men in the photo had no Respect for the man on the ground. The man had been accused of ‘looting’. He was caught and stripped, tied with a rope or some kind of cord, then beaten into unconsciousness. Finally when they had dispensed their form of justice, they set him on fire. The man was breathing as the fire took his life in front of the crowd.
There was no Respect there at all. Murder was considered a lesser evil than the ‘looting’ this man had done. It was suggested also that he may have been one of the escaped convicts from the destroyed jail as well.
The teens pondered the word “Respect” for well over an hour yesterday… and are still considering it today.
Earlier yesterday morning I was sitting in the McDonalds Restaurant not far from our home. As we were reading that same newspaper, a lady in her mid 70s was sitting with her normal coffee crowd for their morning sip together…
I have seen her before. She and her husband often sit at that table with their 8 friends. They are loud and don’t mind who hears what they say. My chair was beside hers and I could hear it all.
Each morning she arrives at McDonalds dressed well. I am sure that it takes her hours to apply the make-up that she wears. This lady is kind of the centre of what is happening in this group. She is almost an attraction.
In her kind of distinctly weird voice she said loudly… “Look at this, a girl sings hymns as doctor amputates her infected hand…!” She had caught the title of the short piece on page A4 of the paper.
I couldn’t believe what came from her mouth next. Remember she is in her mid 70s….
“I can remember when I had my cataract surgery… I held very still and the doctor was impressed. He asked me how I could hold so still. I told him I started to sing to myself, ‘Ninety nine bottles of bear on the wall, ninety nine bottles of bear, if one of the bottles should happen to fall…’. My doctor was impressed!”
I seriously wanted to get up and wipe her make-up off her face. How callous could one person be? How could one person show so little respect for what she had just read in that paper?
The teens pondered the thought of Respect.
Yesterday our congregation received a special offering for a group that works in Haiti. For every dollar raised yesterday the Government of Canada will match it. At the end of the church service there was a cheer that went up. The small but growing congregation had raised over $4,500 for the Haitian relief fund… which now becomes $9,000!
If there is anything that the next generation needs to hear about real love… real life… real heart ache, it is Respect. God help us!
~ Murray Lincoln ~
http://www.murraylincoln.com/
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Source
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/751792--haiti-street-justice-the-worst-in-people
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