Is the young man safe?

Did you hear about the young man who got a haircut and lost a hundred pounds? Yeah, he got his mother off his back!

Polly wouldn’t let me tell that joke in my sermon Sunday so I just had to tell it to you.

It did go along with my talking about Absalom in my sermon. It says in 2 Samuel 14:26 that when Absalom got his hair cut at the end of every year it weighed two hundred shekels, which one commentator said was about 6 pounds. That’s a lot of hair. I’m thinking professional football players Trevor Lawrence or Troy Polamalu.

And sadly, Absalom’s hair played a part in his tragic end that we read about in 2 Samuel 18. He rode under a great terebinth tree on his royal mule and his head got wedged in the branches and his hair got tangled in them. The mule ran out from under him and left him hanging in the tree and perhaps stunned and half conscious.

He was not dead however. King David had commanded his captains and soldiers not to harm his young son Absalom, but David’s chief captain Joab ignored David’s order and led his armor bearers in killing him.

Word was sent to David by a courier that his army had won the battle but this was not the news he most wanted to hear. He asked, “Is the young man Absalom safe?” When he was told about Absalom, he was crushed. The Bible says, “Then the king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept. And as he went, he said thus; ‘O my son Absalom—my son, my son Absalom—if only I had died in your place! O Absalom my son, my son!’” (2 Samuel 18:33).

This is such a sad ending and I think we all feel sympathy for David knowing that he’s blaming himself for what has happened with Absalom and asking himself, “Where did I go wrong?”

I think one reason we feel so much sympathy for him is because we all realize none of us have been perfect parents either, and that we’ve all had our shortcomings. But I shared with the audience one thing that was very encouraging to me that I heard at a parenting class back when my son was very young. The presenter said, “You know our kids will cut us all kinds of slack and they understand we have our bad days, but what you don’t want is having them say that Dad is always having a bad day.”

So, although I had my bad days, I found great encouragement in knowing that I had many more good ones. And I’m sure all of you could say the same thing.

The title of the sermon was, “Is the young man safe?” so I ended it by sharing a few ideas of things parents could do to help keep their “young man” (children) safe.

I will share one of them with you because it includes a story that is very dear to me. One of the sources I used talked about going to worship with our children being one of the things that would help them. And that made me think of something I remember from when my son Joseph was very young.

We were receiving the Gospel Advocate magazine then and on the front of it there was a picture of a painting by Norman Rockwell called “Easter Morning.”

In the painting there was a father sitting in a comfortable chair in his pajamas reading his newspaper and drinking his morning coffee as his wife and children all dressed up in their Sunday best, marching behind him out the door on their way to church.

The father has a little bit of a guilty look on his face as he watches them leave out of the corner of his eye. And like many of Rockwell’s paintings there was some humor in it and Polly, Joseph and I had a good laugh. But then Joseph said something that made me feel very good. He said, “That’s not my dad!”

I hope your children say the same thing and that it will make you feel good too knowing you are doing something very important in keeping your “young man” safe.

Rick Dominy, who sometimes as a teenager lost weight when he got haircuts, is a Gaston County resident and can be reached at 704-675-4862 or humorick007@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Is the young man safe?