Good_Steward
03-07-2008, 08:35 AM
I thought I should share this story. It made me stop and think about how blessed, and stupid I am at the same time.
I was at the range closest to my house a few Monday's ago. I always go on Monday mornings, even have it worked out in my contract to be off on that day. There are not but a handful of people that go shoot during the week, so I usually have the place to myself. There are 2 people who usually come up together to pick up brass for resale. They live pretty close by, and it isn't a middle class neighborhood by any means. This particular day, they had a third person helping them. He looked to be 18 or 19, and he was a big man. I am 6'6 and weigh around 230, and he was nearly as large as I am. Anyway, he was quietly doing his thing, and watching me shoot. Finally, he came over to talk to me. I could tell as soon as he started speaking that he was mentally retarded. He was a very charming young man, though, and was more than happy to critique my shooting skills :p. He let me know how pitiful a shot that I was, and informed me that he only needed his BB gun to kill a deer at 100 yards. Even though he said he hadn't done it yet, he was confident that it would be no challenge to his honed skills.
Anyway, as we talked off and on between shots, I started to feel sorry for him. Here was this strapping young man, who wasn't a bad looking kid, that had never had a shot at life. I thought about this the rest of the day, well after his group had left. Pity never helped anyone. I came around, and thought , who was I to judge this child, and say he hadn't had a great life? I bet he's never wondered about any of the things I would have thought he had missed. While I might see it as a handicap, he might not have wanted the life I would have envisioned for him. He has his family, because he talked of them quite a bit, and how they had taught him so many things. He said how much they loved him, and that his Momma was an excellent cook, and how his Daddy had taught him to shoot his BB gun far better than I was shooting my inferior $2,800 setup. It made me think of how caught up in the worldly things that we think may make us happy, but only leaves us wanting more and more until we are so lost that we can't hardly find our way back to HIS grace.
So here I was after all of this thinking, a successful, educated man humbled my an 18 year old mentally retarded kid.
The Lord truly does work in mysterious ways.
I was at the range closest to my house a few Monday's ago. I always go on Monday mornings, even have it worked out in my contract to be off on that day. There are not but a handful of people that go shoot during the week, so I usually have the place to myself. There are 2 people who usually come up together to pick up brass for resale. They live pretty close by, and it isn't a middle class neighborhood by any means. This particular day, they had a third person helping them. He looked to be 18 or 19, and he was a big man. I am 6'6 and weigh around 230, and he was nearly as large as I am. Anyway, he was quietly doing his thing, and watching me shoot. Finally, he came over to talk to me. I could tell as soon as he started speaking that he was mentally retarded. He was a very charming young man, though, and was more than happy to critique my shooting skills :p. He let me know how pitiful a shot that I was, and informed me that he only needed his BB gun to kill a deer at 100 yards. Even though he said he hadn't done it yet, he was confident that it would be no challenge to his honed skills.
Anyway, as we talked off and on between shots, I started to feel sorry for him. Here was this strapping young man, who wasn't a bad looking kid, that had never had a shot at life. I thought about this the rest of the day, well after his group had left. Pity never helped anyone. I came around, and thought , who was I to judge this child, and say he hadn't had a great life? I bet he's never wondered about any of the things I would have thought he had missed. While I might see it as a handicap, he might not have wanted the life I would have envisioned for him. He has his family, because he talked of them quite a bit, and how they had taught him so many things. He said how much they loved him, and that his Momma was an excellent cook, and how his Daddy had taught him to shoot his BB gun far better than I was shooting my inferior $2,800 setup. It made me think of how caught up in the worldly things that we think may make us happy, but only leaves us wanting more and more until we are so lost that we can't hardly find our way back to HIS grace.
So here I was after all of this thinking, a successful, educated man humbled my an 18 year old mentally retarded kid.
The Lord truly does work in mysterious ways.