FROM THE PULPIT: BACK TO SCHOOL: WITH MODERATION

By now most everyone has returned to school for a new term. I just love this time of year. Every time the big yellow bus comes to pick up the kids for the first time I get nostalgic. I remember the day we put our first child on the bus for the first time.

There were even tears in my eyes and I am a relatively undemonstrative sort. The thought of actually following the bus on that first day actually occurred to me.

I wanted to be sure they were taking good care of my precious cargo.

The night before the first day the kids never sleep well. It is a little like the night before Christmas though certainly not as much fun. When they get on that bus most parents joke about breathing a sigh of relief.

I even heard one mother tell me recently she was planning to kiss the bus driver on the mouth and tell him how glad she was to see him again!

These days, however the sigh of parents might not be a sigh of relief. I read recently that something like 14 million teenagers are going to be enrolled in the nation's high schools this year and even though I know plenty of good kids many of them are going back to some pretty bad habits.

A school administrator made a report to a clergy meeting I was in a while ago and when the ministers asked him what we could do to help he said, "pray for us because we are fighting for your kid's lives out there everyday."

Thousands and thousands from among our "precious cargo" self destruct each year. One Louisiana State University student died and three others were treated during the first week of class after a drinking binge to celebrate fraternity pledge week.

The death came a week after the school was just dubbed one of the country's top 10 partying universities.

I am not so old that I have forgotten that kids drink and smoke because it is cool to buck the system and thwart authority but there is nothing cool about dying of alcohol poisoning and choking on your own vomit.

In his new autobiography, "Just As I Am," Billy Graham says that his own father sat him down in the kitchen one day and made him drink beer.

He didn't like it, Billy says, and he reports that he thinks his father's unorthodox method satisfied any curiosity he might have had at the same time curing him of the desire to ever drink again.

I wonder what a modern-day social worker would have done with that report? It reminds me of what Bill Cosby said when he appeared in Cape Girardeau at the Show Me Center, "when I was young they didn't have child abuse," he said!

As frightened as we are about the prospect that our "precious cargo" will indeed self destruct, punishment and more restrictions hardly seem to be the best fix for this predicament.

That kind of reaction reminds me a little bit of the mother I observed on the parking lot at the mall one day who rescued her toddler from almost running in front of a car and then spanked him for almost getting hurt!

Like it or not, our dear young students, the best it seems that we can do is to send you back to school with the knowledge that we have placed the hope for the future in you. Enjoy your youth, but remember that kicks have kick backs. We are indeed praying for you.