In 2019 the Lord allowed me to volunteer in a reading program with students that needed a little extra help. Among them was a boy I will call Joseph (not his real name) who struggled far more than anyone else.
Part of Joseph’s struggle is he had a learning disability which made reading or remembering letters hard. But the greater problem was his home life.
He was from a single-parent home and Joseph’s mother struggled to care for him. Like many single mothers she would spend most of her time at work, and there would be little time left to help Joseph with his schoolwork. Of course, I don’t blame his mother since she was doing her best, my frustration was with his father who wasn’t in the picture.
One Saturday afternoon I saw Joseph playing with a friend near the sea and asked if he lived near there. He pointed up a narrow gap that led to cheaper housing in the area. A few weeks later he had moved to a school in a new area.
Thinking of Joseph brings sorrow to my heart because it’s a reminder you can’t help everybody
There will always be young people like Joseph who simply need more help than I can offer in my brief ministries like reading help. Satan loves to focus my attention on kids like that and tell me I am a failure.
But that ignores everyone you HAVE REACHED.
There will always be Josephs in this world. We do our best to reach them, and then pray that the Lord will lead and guide their lives. But we cannot focus so much on the ones we cannot reach that we don’t reach the ones we can
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