Welcome to the Director’s Blog on the Jairus website…
It will be here that you and I can check in on thoughts regarding youth, family and community issues. From my desk in the Jericho church of Middleboro, Massachusetts, I can watch as area kids struggle with identity and purpose. We are doing whatever we can to alleviate their concerns and distresses… but the task is large, and on certain days, overwhelming.
At a recent Jairus Teen 12-Step meeting in our offices, I asked how many of the gathered youth felt ‘hopeless’. All of them raised their hands – about twenty teenagers altogether saying that they had nothing to look forward to in their lives. What kind of future is embraced in a spirit of despair and depression? How does that sadness affect their daily choices regarding behavior? Yet, when we enable these youth to perform community service – or to feel validated by listening to them, a transformation begins…
The Jairus Agency believes in the fundamental principle that the human spirit benefits by sacrifice… Many of our young people have never found this realization to be true within themselves, and thus, spend their idle time in self-absorbed efforts to find personal entertainment. This process often leads to criminal behaviors that may allow youths to feel the pain of personal boredom lifted – if but for a moment but cause community and family to be neglected to the detriment of self… Self destructive behaviors multiply as youth are not empowered to see how their poor choices affect others around them.
How much better to change the inner self and become a person that contributes positively to the needs of others around them? Temporary measures to medicate or alleviate personal pain, are replaced by dynamic soul level changes that spring outward into personal behaviors. When a person feels valued – they pour that same value out of their lives.
There is an old Indian Proverb that goes “Whatever fills you up, spills over when you are bumped.” Many of today’s youth spill out anger and frustration – confusion and pain, for that is what they are full of. Through careful measures of intervention Jairus seeks to fill juveniles with hope and positive beliefs – causing them to instead, spill over value and esteem into their surroundings… And, it works. Read some of the testimonials of our anonymous 12-Step teenagers, and then read the ancient words of Jesus of Nazareth… who taught that it is more blessed to give than to receive…