Reform School

READ:Galatians 1:11-24

I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus.

When Brandon Harlee was a disruptive sixth-grader in an inner-city school, someone stepped into his life and gave him a chance. All the statistics said he would never graduate from high school, and would likely end up in jail. But Brandon and 40 other boys like him were removed from their drug-filled, crime-ridden neighborhoods and sent 6,000 miles away to Kenya. There at a boarding school named Baraka (a Swahili word for “blessing”) they received a second chance to experience childhood while learning to see themselves in a new way.

In Andrew Goldstein’s TIME magazine article, he describes the boys’ visit to a nearby Kenyan town where many local barefoot kids envied their Nike high-tops and begged them for money. “Suddenly the students are no longer apprentice hoodlums from the slums,” Goldstein writes. “They’re rich Americans with more than enough to eat, and bright opportunities.”

Does that kind of reform school produce lasting change? Yes and no. Some of the boys refused to cooperate and were sent home. Others completed their 2 years and returned with a new direction in life. It all depended on their response.

When we’re faced with unwelcome circumstances, we can react with resentment or acceptance. Maybe our employer or school requires us to live in a place we don’t like. Illness or death in our family may completely alter our future plans. We have to decide if it’s a God-given opportunity or the end of the world.

Just after Saul of Tarsus met Jesus Christ on the Damascus road, the former persecutor of Christians said, “I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus” (Galatians 1:17). We know very little about this 3-year period except that it removed him from his normal environment at a critical period in his life. It was during this time that he received the understanding of the gospel of Christ that would set the direction of his life.

God may put us in new circumstances so we can learn to know and trust Him more. That kind of spiritual “reform school” can be a life-changing time. It depends on how we respond. —Dave McCasland

REFLECTION

• What kind of unwelcome change am I facing today?
• How do I think God might be involved in my altered circumstances?
• Who decides whether I react with resentment or acceptance?

“When you’re through changing, you’re through.” —Bruce Barton

cbn