A Charge to Keep

“Do you have any seersucker trousers?” Howard asked the sales girl. We were shopping some of the Memorial Day sales and he wanted some of the cool, striped cotton pants so popular in the south. The suits are a summer uniform for urban professionals, especially in New Orleans where we used to live.

“Is that a brand?” she asked, clueless. When I described them to her, she said she didn’t think so, but we’d better ask someone who had been there longer.

So many things seem to be known only to those of us who’ve been here longer. Take the Thanksgiving I asked a grocery stocker if he could tell me where the mincemeat was. Howard had requested his favorite pie for dessert to top off our feast. “I’ll go look in the meat department,” the young man said after scratching his head quizzically. Later I found a jar with the pie filling. The mixture of fruit and spices may have originally contained meat, but I think they use vegetable shortening now for the smidgen of fat.

The other day we were driving through southern Oklahoma on our way to Texas, and I saw the sign for Gene Autry, Oklahoma, a small community near Ardmore. I asked our granddaughter, Allison, who was traveling with us, if she knew who Gene Autry was. She didn’t. Well, she’s only 19, and probably has never heard the famous cowboy’s ballads or never saw him in the movies. He lived briefly in that area the year I was born, so the community of Berwyn was renamed for him.

I remember once mentioning Jackie Kennedy to one of my then teen-age daughters, and she had never heard of her. Kids live in such a world of their own, one in which I’m not too familiar, either. My 13-year-old granddaughter put a new picture on her face book, and I thought it was another boyfriend. She told me the name, and later I started recognizing it from people’s comments about American Idol. Apparently, he won, but I never watch the show. (Because I don’t like the name, “Idol,” which shows how old-fashioned I am!)

In the same way, there are always those in the younger generation who have not heard of the story of salvation. Young people are a mission field. David said in Psalm 71:17-18, “O God, thou has taught me from my youth: and hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works. Now also when I am old and gray-headed, O God, forsake me not; until I have showed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.” A worthy prayer for every Christian.