Not all Sixth-Graders are bad

AN ADOLESCENT ANGEL
“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” Proverbs 15:11.

“Have you always been pretty?” the twelve-year-old asked his nurse.
“Why? I’m not pretty.”
“Yes, you are. You’re very pretty.”
My wife, the nurse on duty that night, was in the process of admitting the twelve-year-old during the night. He was suffering from an asthma attack, and had to go the hospital after midnight. Twelve-year-olds aren’t known to be a favorite people among adults. They have a reputation for insolence, rudeness and lack of respect. Several Bible class teachers in a church I once served quit their classes at the end of the quarter, saying that children in this age are too much for them to handle.
I was hospitalized thirty years ago at about this boy’s age. I was a less-than-ideal patient. None of the nurses on duty showed any joy at my return six weeks later to have my cast removed. I met one of my nurses ten years later at that same hospital while I was visiting a member of my youth group. I asked her if she remembered me, and she said she couldn’t recall. I exclaimed, “Praise the Lord!”
Nevertheless, here was this pre-adolescent in mortal peril because of his uncontrollable asthma, undergoing a painful IV stick, giving a sincere compliment to his nurse. He sounds like leadership material to me. I have visited church elders and wives of elders (whose mature character qualifies an elder for his position—see Proverbs 31), who have demonstrated a self-less attitude like this young man. Many of these church leaders, with tubes running into their bodies, give out sincere compliments and express concern for the welfare of others. The young hospital patient is headed for the same position of leadership if he continues to receive spiritual guidance. It will further aid his development if he is limited in exposure to those adults who model rudeness and disrespect with their childish behavior.
Scores of adolescents like this young man have passed under my ministry. They far outnumber the “sinkers” who tend to stick in the memory. What a pity that an entire generation must bear the reproach of four or five in a class who mess with the sugar bowls and salt and pepper shakers at a restaurant. We send our kids the wrong message when our media gives more attention to the stone throwers than they do to the leaf-rakers in the community.
Stone-throwers also need positive attention. More than a few of them come under the positive attention of a kindly saint who helps them re-shape their focus. I might have been a stone-thrower but for the timely intervention of a couple of godly Sunday School teachers, classroom teachers and saintly older members of the community who lent a hand toward redirecting my life.
It’s likely that several individuals matching this description have placed an encouraging hand on this twelve-year-olds shoulder. Someone has modeled Christ-like behavior for this lad, and he has paid attention. That’s how we build community leaders, elders and church deacons. More than one doctor, minister and teacher has in his or her youth paid attention to godly examples witnessed in childhood.
Spend more time encouraging than criticizing youth, and you may be pleasantly surprised during an encounter with one of these kids. It’s a sweet aroma to be complimented by an adolescent. Both are gifts from God: the compliment and the adolescent. Cherish them.