You Can Do It

Yesterday at the gym, I saw a woman on a machine that was loaded with weights and she was getting ready to bench press all of them. I must have looked surprised. I am a novice when it comes to complicated machines.

"You can do it" she said. I laughed. "You can take the weights off".

Her words "You can do it" just rang in my ears. How seldom we hear that from anyone. She was young and fit and well I well....

One of the things we need most is encouragement as I wrote before. In any area we need to know that someone thinks that we can do it.

In our hearts we may fear trying something new. We may think negatives about volunteering, for example, and think I could never do that. I have no talents or not enough time.

Most of the team working with us for children have very demanding jobs. They have "no time" but they make time to come to meetings and serve once a year at camp for one week.

We all have 24 hours per day. How much time do we give to being entertained. I am not against that: it is just the amount. If we have no time to give back in our neighborhoods, or churches, or community, are we really being salt and light as Jesus said we were to be.

If we sat down with a child and helped tutor that child for a couple of hours a week, would that kill our day runners? Would helping a child stay in school and be encouraged and not drop out by 8th grade make a difference?

Many years ago I had a year substituting in high school. I taught almost everything except boys PE. Algebra was tough for me because I always had a hard time in math. So, I went very, very slowly over the problems on the board. Too my surprise, I got a call from a students mother begging me to tutor her son who was flunking out of algebra.

"He can't understand Mr. X," she said "but he can follow you because you are so slow". This mother literally begged me to "take on" her son. Reluctantly, I started but soon realized that I could help him by studying his book and going very slowly, yes very slowly with him on the problems."

His mother kept having a "YOU CAN DO IT" message to me and kept me posted on her son's progress. He made an A in the course and I was surprised, and delighted.