Altar Call –
Opelika-Auburn News
Walter Albritton
August 21, 2016
Mentors help us
believe in ourselves
A mentor is a wise and trusted teacher or
counselor. The key word is “trusted.” Mentoring occurs when a student admires and
believes in a counselor’s instruction.
Mentors give us self-confidence. An example
of a great mentor is Bela Karolyi, legendary coach of the US Women’s gymnastics
team. In Olympic competition, as his
gymnasts step up to perform, you can hear Karolyi quietly saying, “You can do
it! You can do it!”
Those
four powerful words can motivate people to do their best in almost any
endeavor. To have someone believe in you does for your mind what eating spinach
did for Popeye’s body. To a large extent success requires confidence in your
own ability to achieve your goals.
I learned the basic lessons of life from
my parents. They taught me to value family, farm life, good food, reading,
honesty, worship, relationships and hard work. In my adulthood I realized that
without ever using the words, my parents had mentored me to believe in myself.
They never belittled me or criticized me to the extent that I doubted my
self-worth.
When I was 13 I met “Brother Si” Mathison. He was my pastor, the first preacher who took an
interest in me. He was more than the man
who preached on Sundays. He “connected” with me. For the first time in my life
I became interested in my spiritual life
Though
I did not recognize it at the time, Brother Si became my spiritual mentor. I admired
him but even more I trusted him; he knew my name and I could talk to him. In
time he became the most important influence in my life – the role model who
sparked a desire in me to become a pastor. I never lost the desire to be like
him.
During his last years Brother Si spent some
time living at Wesley Gardens Retirement Home in Montgomery. I visited him
there more than once. We talked and prayed together. I thanked him for his
friendship and his prayers. He had prayed for me daily for half a century. His
wife Mary and his sons John Ed and George had been like family to me since my
teen years.
When Brother Si died I was unable to
attend his funeral. My disappointment was tempered by my conviction that
Brother Si would not be there either. He was already in the company of the
Father. His sons, like brothers to me, would merely celebrate his life and bury
the body of the man who had been my spiritual father. For 50 years Brother Si
had been to me what Saint Paul had been to Timothy, a wise and trusted counselor,
teacher, friend – and mentor of the first order.
Brother Si taught me, as the Apostle Paul
taught Timothy, to trust the counsel of the Bible. That was important since our
culture, much like Timothy’s culture of the first century, is prone to question
the authority of the Bible. A preacher who doubts that God inspired the
scriptures is like a lost ball in high weeds. Brother Si motivated me to
believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. From that conviction I have
never wavered.
Mentoring can be expanded to include
persons we know only through their writings. Elton Trueblood,
the Quaker philosopher, persuaded me to think of deceased persons like Martin
Luther, John Wesley, Thomas a Kempis, Oswald Chambers and others as mentors.
This
idea allows me to embrace Saint Paul as not only Timothy’s mentor but my own as
well. As I read his wise counsel in the Bible, Paul becomes another mentor and role
model for living my faith.
Look back over your life and name your mentors
and role models. Give thanks for those who said, in many different ways, “You
can do it!” And consider yourself especially blessed if you live long enough to
hear some younger person say, “Thank you for mentoring me.” + + +