I started out with the elementary school boys. At that age, even if they're in for anger management problems, they hear the teacher tell them to go stand in the hall and smile and they do. One boy smiled with such a surprising flash of brilliance I'm surprised my retinas are intact.
The teenage boys aren't so eager to have their smiles preserved for posterity. They're trying to save face, to be tough. "I don't smile for cameras" I hear, over and over again, and I heckle them about it and most of them give a little. Some break into laughter and hide their faces in their hands. "Wait, wait! Don't take it yet, don't take it yet!"
Maybe while they've been here they've knocked over chairs and started fistfights and threatened teachers, and maybe if they'd been a few years older when they did whatever landed them here they'd be in prison, and maybe they're still on the way there. Picture day reminds me of the hungry hearts beneath the bluster and bravado.
"The young lions do lack and suffer hunger;
But they who seek the LORD shall not be in want of any good thing."
-- Psalm 34:10
"Seek the LORD while He may be found;
Call upon Him while He is near."
--Isaiah 55:6
"The LORD is near to all who call upon Him,
To all who call upon Him in truth."
--Psalm 145:18
Pray for my boys, and pray for lionhearted men to walk beside them and teach them how and Whom to seek.
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