We hit juvie twice a month with a superteam of amazing volunteers from our church… a ragtag group of God’s mission team – many castoffs from the world’s standards. The biggest challenge there isn’t the message we bring….it’s how we bring it.
“The devil don’t usually attack the message, he attacks relationship.”- Pastor Art, a 70+ year old Missionary Baptist Pastor in one of the toughest areas of our city.
This is a guest blog by one of our very best friends in the world…Jill Dykstra (pictured here with my daughter Anikah). It will blow you away.
30 months ago I lay knees bound to my chest, face to the floor, tears strolling down my face, crying out to God.
30 months ago I asked God if he heard me, I begged him to hear me, I asked him to help me, I screamed in my desperation, I wept with loss.
30 months ago I told God I didn’t want to live my life, I didn’t want addictions to rule over me, I didn’t want men to consume me, I didn’t want friends to use me.
I told God if he could save me from the pit I was in I would forever be His.
I sit here today knees bound to my chest, face to the floor, tears strolling down my face, crying out to God…
Because in 30 months God has done more than I could ever share. God has given me more peace than alcohol could, more fulfillment than any man could, and a high like no drugs ever did.
Because in 30 months I have found…
“The kids in this school aren’t yours. You do your peace with them and you let them go.”
The video here is a slice of the Wire, Season 4, Episode 12. Duquan, aka Dukie, is an 8th grade kid whose addict parents sell his school uniforms for drugs and hardly ever feed him. Prez, a new teacher, intervenes, buys new uniforms for Duquan, keeps them at school, and has his wife do Duquan’s laundry. Also, he teaches him computer skills and builds a strong mentor relationship with him. As this video shows, the joy is shortlived.
Duquan is “At Risk Youth” as they come. For moments in Season 4, he has flashes of greatness, and you think he will somehow escape the hell he’s lived. Prez is his lifeline, but Dukie lets go.
What the assistant principal, Ms. Donnelly, said was her way of coping. And she’s wrong.
“No one wins. One side just loses more slowly.” – Prez, the Wire Season 4
Pictured above from left to right: Namond, Randy, Michael, and Duquan begin ‘The Wire’ Season 4 as kids just leaving 7th grade. 1 has a dad is serving life in prison, another is in foster care. 1 is a victim of child abuse, while another has a drug addict mother who sells his school clothes and food stamps for drugs.
The Wire is not for the faint of heart by a long shot (language, violence, sex, you name it). Set at ground zero of Baltimore’s street battles for drug turf, it captures the emotion and stories of the lives affected by a battle ‘no one wins’. ‘God on the Wire’ will be a discussion of the gruesome gears of Drug Addiction, Prison and Foster Care and the lives wrecked there.
In 2009, NPR aired an episode of ‘Speaking of Faith’ called “TV and Parables of our Time”. It discussed 4 television shows and the role of faith interwoven into the human struggle within each. Lost and The Wire were 2 of the 4, and Rachel and I were drawn into both those worlds on the small screen.
Churches are pictured throughout the Wire, but really play no prominent role. In reality, Drug Addiction, Crime, and Foster Care are things the government has been tasked to ‘handle’, and churches play a secondary role, if that. I lost track of the number of times Rachel has screamed at the television set…. “Where’s the church?”
These 4 boys face a 6 month tightwire fight for their lives ..On 1 side of it are drug dealers, killers, gangs, and family. On the other- an unlikely cast of mentors : a first year teacher, an ex con, an ex police chief, and a narcotics officer.
Where are you on the Wire? Are you walking it…. choosing between 2 people you could be? Or are you on 1 side or the other…pulling the line tight and urging wandering souls to come to your side?
Today, George Lawson had $60, a bus ticket home to Indiana, some khaki pants, a t-shirt, and a blue mesh bag. Back near Indianapolis, his wife and 3 kids are waiting on him right now…he’s probably asleep on the bus from Atlanta right about now.
George and I were both at the back of the line of 14 people in Lake City, Florida this afternoon at the Greyhound Station. Neither George nor I felt compelled to be rude…and both let an older lady go in front of us and chose to go on the bus last, then we ended up sitting together for the 1 hour trek to Jacksonville on the front seat.
I was finishing the edits on a guest blog for our senior pastor’s blog today, and George introduced himself. He said, “I just got out of prison.”
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