Time In A Bottle

Some of the kids I wrote about here are now thirty! The following, from May 22, 2007, covers an exercise of remembrance for my students.

We've been making time capsules in my Bible classes as the end of the school year looms. I guess the term time capsule is kind of a stretch. I have all the students in a period sign one of our Honduras bank bottles with a Sharpie. On a sheet of paper, they jot down their favorite memory/memories of the year in class. Some write a sentence and some use an entire page. The papers are folded and stuffed inside the plastic bottle and deposited in the bedroom closet in my apartment. Lord willing, I'll pull them off the shelf in ten or fifteen years and reminisce through the eyes of young men and women. When I read them again, these kids will be on the adult side of twenty..... or thirty.

It's been a good year in Room 258. Part of the reason I'm upbeat about the past nine months is the group of seniors enrolled in my Life Of Christ classes, normally reserved for sophomores. There is a huge difference between a sixteen and eighteen year old. Life is about to get very interesting for the group picking up their diplomas in ninety-six hours. What will the upcoming twenty-five years hold for the Class of 2007? Like any of us, it can go two ways. Just ask Jerry Ambrozuk. In 1982, the eighteen year old Canadian and Dianne Babcock, his eighteen year old girl friend, rented a plane and flew across the border into the United States to start a new life. In attempting a water landing, the small plane sank in a Montana lake and Babcock drown. Ambrozuk disappeared and has been living in Texas under an assumed name since the crash. After being featured on America's Most Wanted, the Canadian expatriate was captured and this week was in court receiving a suspended sentence from a plea bargain and the dropping of negligent homicide charges. Ambrozuk testified he tried to save Babcock but was unable to pull her from the plane. Do you know how they finally tracked down Ambrozuk? An unpaid water bill! It just seems fitting. What a way to spend a quarter of a century. My prayer is that none of our seniors end up dying prematurely or evading the law for decades. I pray their steps lead them on righteous paths and their legacy is one of excellence in the Lord. I pray when I open those time capsules in the distant future, the good memories they have penned will match my recollections of their lives as teenagers and ultimately, as adults.


Applicable quote of the day:
"We seem to have a strong compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like."
Alfred Hitchcock

To listen to the incomparable Jim Croce sing Time In A Bottle, please copy and paste link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO1rMeYnOmM

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
www.hawleybooks.com
E-mail me at steve@hawleybooks.com