Get into the boat

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Pearl

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Apr 9, 2019
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I’ve been thinking recently about a young man from my church that I used to know many years ago. He was about twenty when I first knew him, good looking, well-spoken, intelligent and clean with his own home and as he was unemployed he would sometimes drop by for a cuppa and to chat about spiritual matters.

At first I was glad that he felt he could come and talk to me and I was happy to listen to him and try to help him find answers. Later as his visits became more and more frequent I came to dread his knock at the door.

He would go over the same ground time and time again. It was like he didn’t really want my opinions or advice but just wanted the attention. He never took anything I said to heart and I later learned that when one person got fed up of him he would latch on to somebody else and go over the same things again and again with whoever he could get to listen.

After I moved house I heard no more about him until about twenty five years later when I was told he had become an alcoholic and suffered from liver disease and had eventually died, drunk and alone, in a fire at his home.

This is a tragic story but I suspect most of us have known people like that; people who asked for help but wouldn’t be helped; people who refused to get into the lifeboat no matter how many hands had been stretched out to them.

His father had been a vicar in the Church of England but both his parents had died whilst he was still young. His sister was a friend but did not have the same reservations about her faith that he had. He knew the answers but could not take the necessary decision that would bring him out of darkness into light. To this day I don’t know what held him back.

It is so sad, because he knew he needed to get in the boat but he never would. The choice was his.
 

marks

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Oct 10, 2018
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I’ve been thinking recently about a young man from my church that I used to know many years ago. He was about twenty when I first knew him, good looking, well-spoken, intelligent and clean with his own home and as he was unemployed he would sometimes drop by for a cuppa and to chat about spiritual matters.

At first I was glad that he felt he could come and talk to me and I was happy to listen to him and try to help him find answers. Later as his visits became more and more frequent I came to dread his knock at the door.

He would go over the same ground time and time again. It was like he didn’t really want my opinions or advice but just wanted the attention. He never took anything I said to heart and I later learned that when one person got fed up of him he would latch on to somebody else and go over the same things again and again with whoever he could get to listen.

After I moved house I heard no more about him until about twenty five years later when I was told he had become an alcoholic and suffered from liver disease and had eventually died, drunk and alone, in a fire at his home.

This is a tragic story but I suspect most of us have known people like that; people who asked for help but wouldn’t be helped; people who refused to get into the lifeboat no matter how many hands had been stretched out to them.

His father had been a vicar in the Church of England but both his parents had died whilst he was still young. His sister was a friend but did not have the same reservations about her faith that he had. He knew the answers but could not take the necessary decision that would bring him out of darkness into light. To this day I don’t know what held him back.

It is so sad, because he knew he needed to get in the boat but he never would. The choice was his.
That IS sad!