A Special Purpose

Tonight was a good time for Thomas to pray. To thank God that he hadn’t gotten beat up today on the side of some unnamed road. And to ask for help for the next week, and next month, and maybe until someone one day handed him his diploma, his get-out-of-jail-free card.

It was dark and quiet. Thomas missed being able to hear the cars passing by on their street back where they used to live. He couldn’t rightly call that place home, even though he wasn’t sure what else to call it. This place wasn’t home either, this barely skinned skeleton surrounding them. Whatever his father’s house could be considered, Thomas missed the sounds of life around it. This place was just way too still.

“Dear Jesus, please hear me now.”

The youth pastor at their old church taught him to pray. He always said there was not a right or wrong way to pray. Pastor Grady just taught them that they ought to pray all the time. And Thomas did. And he kept believing that it was the right thing to do, that God heard him and cared. Sometimes, especially on nights like this one, Thomas wondered.

“Give me strength, God. Please help me be strong. Help me get through this so that I can do something and make a difference.”

This was his prayer.

“Help me make a difference.”

This was the prayer of a fifteen-year-old boy.

He had heard Pastor Grady once pray that and he thought it was the coolest thing. This short and balding pastor in a tiny church praying for God to help him make a dent in the world. The guy could’ve prayed for a bigger church or for more visitors or maybe even for more hair, but instead he’d prayed that he could help the people around him.

That had stuck with Thomas.

Later in life, he might be able to. He liked to dream that he was playing on a pro team and he had young kids looking up at him. That was when he could make a difference, when he could be a positive role model. But now he just needed to figure out how to make it through the day without getting beat up or getting those looks from kids who didn’t know or care about him.

You have to stand on solid ground before reaching out to the rest of the world, he thought. And his ground was pretty shaky.

Thomas couldn’t pray for more solid ground, however. That felt wrong. He could pray for his mother and his sister and even his father, but he couldn’t pray to win the lottery or for a better house or life. That just didn’t feel right to him.

So he prayed to make a difference.

“Anybody can change the world,” Pastor Grady once said.

It was the sort of thing that politicians said. But Thomas still liked to believe it.