Gangs and Bullies X (Park)

 Happy are they who dwell in your house!

 - From Psalm 84

The Psalmist strikes at the very heart of our deepest longing: a house, a home.

A place where you belong. A dwelling, where you can take your shoes off and it's always appropriate. A home . . . a building where your loved ones live. A place of memories: of childhood years, of games with siblings, cousins, and friends.

Through the years, your dwelling changes. If it remains your chief abode (and we are wired to resist change), then you go from being a child that loves hearing stories from your grandparents, to an elderly person that is cheered when the grandchildren visit. 

The Psalmist affirms: one day on God's house is better than a thousand living in the tents . . . (the "tents", plural) of the wicked. 

But don't the wicked have more fun?

Perhaps . . . but your spirit is not warmed in the homes of the wicked. You can't just say, "I'm going to bed now," and then walk out of the living room, down the hall, to your room . . . your room . . . in your bed . . . where your pajamas may be retrieved from your chest of drawers. And when you awake in the morning, you may help yourself to some breakfast, because it's your house, your home, so . . . don't worry, relax, be comfortable, be safe, and be secure.

There's a certain profound form of trust and security, when you can have an overnight stay in the home of family, and they have prepared a sleeping quarters especially for you. The wicked are horrible at that. Because even if they feign hospitality, it's all fake. 

I had a fourth grade classroom one year. In Language Arts, the kids were working on their own "personal narrative," in which they described the most important event of the first ten years of their lives, and then presented in an oral report. The activity ended up being more heartbreaking than I anticipated. 

A typical narrative was by one boy, who said that his parents' divorce was the most important event in his life, because from then on, he never had his own bedroom. He would go to his Dad's house for a week, and sleep in a bed that would go to his step-brother on the off weeks. But the same thing happened when it came to his mother's home.

Kids without homes. Kids without a bedroom. 

Do you think they become bullies? Do you think their sense of separation from their families, and from a true home, makes them more likely to join gangs, or mass movements of angry people protesting something? 

The solution to gangs and bullies is strong families and homes.

But that's pretty much the solution to everything.