Boys Will Be Men

My sons and I once took on the challenge of fixing the front porch of our old home that required some significant TLC. I’m not much of a handyman, but I can wreck things with the best of men and so we set to work ripping out aluminum soffit in order to get at the beams that were failing after a hundred years of enduring the elements. To add to the fun we discovered a rather substantial accumulation of bat guano piled high on that old soffit as well. What great hilarity for a couple of boys and their dad! Trying to hit each other with bat poop-bombs really impressed the females in the Wagler tribe.
Seeking to reestablish myself as the mostly responsible father, I made it clear we were going to dispose of this crappy aluminum post-haste and so we threw it with an emphatic clatter into our old trailer. To my great dismay one of my sons became determined, despite my protests of what ills will befall him should he play with the guano-infested metal, to build an Ironman suit out of the junk – just like the one in the movies – that would fly and shoot down unsuspecting sea gulls at will. “Good God,” I prayed, “change my son’s mind, or at the very least, build a poop-protecting force field around him – oh – and I beseech Thee, keep his mother from seeing what’s going on.”
What is it with boys and their crazy ideas? What is it with fathers and their attempts to tame their sons? I fought every nerve to pull my son back to reality. This hair-brained scheme was pointless. Still, I let him go – even gave him some tools – and went to distract his mother from getting near the back yard where all this amateur NASA engineering was going on. The suit never got made. Turns out building a rocket propelled suit out of soffit is slightly more complicated than one might think. Still, it was a joy watching the attempt be made and it reminded me of the wonder of being a boy.
Allow me, for just one moment, to ask the men out there this: You were once a boy with crazy ideas, what type of man have you become? Tamed? Tepid? Tired? Ticked? Tactless? Telf-seeking (I really mean self-seeking, but needed a “T” to keep the prose going)?
The truth is that boys will be men. Every man was once a boy, but what kind of man is he becoming? What kind of man am I becoming? Am I more and more the man of God’s making, of Jesus’ rescuing, of the Spirit’s transforming, or just a boy trapped in a body that won’t stop motoring in the wrong direction?
Boys who are becoming sons of the Kingdom are men after God’s own heart. Men, the Kingdom of God is a great adventure! It is, believe it or not, even greater than building a guano-stained Ironman suit. Boys will be men; that you can count on. So, gents, what kind of man are you becoming? Whose man are you? And, how might you join the Kingdom adventure with other men who were once boys like you too?