I was rather busy, dressing wounds and stuff like that, and I found out that I really do love tending wounded people. My maternal instincts welled up at the sight of all those wounded young men (and a very few young ladies, too) needing medical attention.
But boys will be boys and they will always be the ones most likely to get hurt.
Picture a giant rubber ball in an open field, two goals and two team of super energetic, goal-driven, passionate young men lined up. The game was simple enough. To earn a point, the only thing needed was for the giant rubber ball to touch the opponent’s goal.
Simple as it sounds, the game involves boys being dragged to the ground, piled on top of each other, almost breaking each others bones, hugging the ball, chasing the ball, grabbing each other, pulling each other off the ball, and other brutal antics that had the rest of my fellow first aiders at the edge of the seat. I was just having fun watching them being boys.
The afternoon games, which were pool games, were milder. The first game involved a pool, two giant rubber matress and three boys per team. The rules were simple enough. Last man standing. The goal was to topple your opponent into the water. But since boys were playing it, this game involved a lot dunking and jumping into the opponent’s matress and peeling off the opponents and stuff like that. The girls’ game, a sort-of pool basketball, was too mild and made me really sleepy.
Prior to the pool games, the young men and the ladies had separate sessions. Because the First Aid Station was near where the boys had their Talk, I got a heavy dose of Boy Talk.
The first few minutes had me laughing. The introduction given by the speaker, an elder of the community, was pretty hilarious and involved differentiating men from women, especially since he gave a pretty accurate imitation of how the girls played one of the games.
He said men were goal-oriented and passionate. They wanted to win. And seeing how the boys played Battle Ball made me agree. The boys didn’t care about breaking their necks. They only cared about getting the ball and winning. Girls were more process-oriented. They wanted the “bonding” and were into “relationships”. The elder went on to say that most of the brilliant personages in history were men and yet at the same time, the most brilliant criminals in history were also men.
The talk centered on being a real hero and the stuff men were made of. They talked about testosterone, its effects and other things I’ve been aware of for a long time now. And then they moved to the key issue: Purity.
The elder emphasized the necessity that every young man should maintain purity amidst the corruption of the world. He shared to us his own experience, about the promise he made to himself, that the first woman he’ll kissed on the lips would be his wife.
His words were powerful and it had an impact on those group of God-first young men. And it touched my heart to see these young men offering to God their lives, their desire to be pure for Him and for their future wives. It touched me, because there are too few heroes and too many jerks around.
In them I see hope for the coming generation.  And I pray that these young men, with God’s grace, live up to be men of God, real heroes, in their own families, in their community and in the world.
(Source:
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder