There was a elderly man who came into my office, and began to confide in me, and what he said to me I asked for
permission to write about it. His statement was "If it will keep anyone from traveling the road that I have traveled, by
all means do so." So I write by permission.
This elderly man was born in the city of Detroit, Michigan, where his family were middle-class citizens, and feared the
Lord. They taught him that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." At the age of five, he was entered into
kindergarten, where he encountered other children different from himself, and because of his temper, he stabbed a
little child in the face with a pencil. This was his first encounter with the law.
At the age of twelve, he joined a gang, and for his initiation, he had to stab a person. He did so, and was caught, and
spent nine months in the Juvenile Detention Center. Upon his release, he was to be under supervised probation. He
completed that task.
At the age of eighteen, he shot and killed a store clerk, and was sentenced 21 to life in prison. He served
twenty-nine years in a correctional facility. Upon his release, he found that he had no skills to operate in society, so
he began to sell drugs, and built an organization that sold drugs for him. Eventually, he was caught, at that time, he
was forty-six years old. He went to trial and was sentenced to fifteen years, and was classified as a habitual criminal.
He served thirteen years, and was released. At the time of his release, he was fifty-nine years old.
He became ill, and applied for disability through the Social Security System, and was told "You do not have enough
credits (pay-ins) to receive disability." So, he reverted back to crime. He robbed a liquor store, and received ten
years. He maxed out after serving nine and a half years.
When he came into my office, he was seventy years old. He began to cry and said to me "Where did the time go? I
have no family connection, I have no children, I have no home, I have no disability payments, I can only get what
someone gives me." And he asked a question, "Bishop, where did I go wrong?" I stated "When you rejected your
father's and mother's training, you rejected Christ." The Bible states "Train up a child in the way it should go, and
when it is old, it will not depart from it." No one can force you to accept God's training, but when you are old, if it is
not there, you will suffer the things that you are suffering now.
He showed me pictures of him as a child, teenager, and a young adult. He was a very handsome man at the time of
those pictures. I looked, and I saw and old, broken, man who sat in my office, asking "Where did the time go?"
If you are traveling this road, please take heed and change roads, take the high road. The road of righteousness.
Think about it.