For Wilshire Baptist Church
While mowing the lawn Thursday morning I was visited by a steady flow of school buses rattling down our street and stopping at our corner. They were empty because school hasn’t started yet, but the drivers were getting familiar with their routes.
Earlier that morning at our regular weekly breakfast, the guys and I talked about our lives, what we’ve accomplished and haven’t accomplished since those school days when the future in front of us was bright and promising. We’ve all done fine, but the dream and the reality don’t always match. Some of that’s our fault, and some of it’s just life, but we all at least had a good start with a good education.
Two of the guys have wives and daughters in education, and their concerns about the current state of our schools are real. My mother and grandmother were both educators, as is LeAnn, so I share their concerns. I want the kids who ride those buses to dream big and grow up and be good neighbors and great leaders.
There’s been a lot of dreams on display these past two weeks at the Summer Olympics in Paris. For some athletes their dream of competing at the Olympic level has been fulfilled regardless of whether they win or lose. For others, winning a medal is the dream, and the disappointment is palpable when we see them fall short. But life goes on, and some of those who compete will flourish in other realms of achievement. Others will go home and have difficulty transitioning from the international stage to relative anonymity. They’ll need to find new dreams.
Competing with the Olympics for our attention in recent days has been our national politics, with the preliminary heats over and the final challengers named and set for the sprint to Election Day. At stake are the hopes and dreams of millions of us who want nothing more than a chance to have a life that is safe, enjoyable and meaningful. Some of us are already there, but we can’t afford to be content with that because our dreams are woven together.
Next week the school buses will be full of kids, and those kids’ heads and hearts are full of dreams we’ve helped plant in them. It’s up to us — all of us — to nurture the seeds we have sown.