As I write, yesterday was the first day for high school seniors to sign with colleges around the country to play football next year. The morning Times-Picayune is jam-packed with stories of “blue-chip prospects” in the state and elsewhere who have committed themselves to attend college and play ball at LSU, Tulane, and other schools in the state. According to the rating services that study these things, LSU and Alabama have recruited the best talent in the nation.

Every athletic team of any size and prominence in this country — professional or amateur — has its scouts, people who are paid workers or volunteers who keep up with the teams at lower levels in order to recommend talented individuals for the teams or schools they work for.

If you want to send a thrill through a high school senior just before a big game, tell him, “A scout from such-and-such university is in the stadium tonight.” To give the same thrill to the college senior, say, “A scout from such-and-such pro team is in the stands.”

They’re being looked at, their talent and abilities assessed. Life may be about to change for them.

My ministry mentor, Dr. James Richardson of Mississippi, loved the writings of the old Scottish preacher, Ian MacLaren. After James went to Heaven three years ago — has it been that long? It seems like last month; I miss him every day — his wonderful wife Cissa sent me James’ copy of MacLaren’s “Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush,” published in 1894. She wrote, “To Joe, James’ son in the ministry. This was one of his favorite books — he read it many times — and I know he would want you to have it. Lovingly, Cissa.” Dated March 4, 2006. It’s a treasure in every way.

Now, Ian MacLaren does an interesting thing. He begins the book by writing in what most of us know as the heavy Scottish dialect, the kind of writing that looks like something Robert Burns produced. I wonder if he did that to deter all but the most serious readers. Anyway, a few pages in, he abandons that style except in conversations, where we can take it. Otherwise, he writes in “good English,” you’ll pardon the expression.

What I wanted to share with you is something MacLaren wrote about the schoolmaster in a little Scottish village, known officially Patrick Jamieson, Schoolmaster, Drumtochty, N.B., but affectionately by the children as “Domsie.” The beloved teacher was always on the lookout for gifted students whom he would encourage to go on to college and better things.

Domsie was always alert for what he called “pairts” in young students. Never defining the term, the writer leaves the reader to figure out for himself that what he means is an unusual aptitude in some area of learning. One student was discovered to have a love for insects and to have made a collection of all such bugs in their village. “Bumbee Willie, as he had been pleasantly called by his companions, was rescued from ridicule and encouraged to fulfil his bent.” In time, MacLaren points out, that student went on to become “the greatest living authority on beetles,” with a position in the British Museum.

MacLaren writes, “But it was (a gift for)Latin (which) Domsie hunted for as for fine gold, and when he found the smack of it in a lad he rejoiced openly. He counted it a day in his life when he knew certainly that he had hit on another scholar….”

The moment Domsie discovered such a student, he instructed the child to inform his parents that he would be calling on them that evening. The family understandably worried that their son had been misbehaving or that they themselves were in trouble for some reason. That evening, after cleaning the house from top to bottom — the schoolmaster was the most honored person in their village and his visit something special — the family gathered to await the caller. They received Domsie, they chatted about superficial things, and then, “At last Domsie cleared his throat and looked at Marget, who had been in and out, but ever within hearing. ‘George is a fine laddie, Mrs. Howe.'”

The mother muttered something appropriate, then waited for Domsie to drop the other shoe and reveal what he was about. Finally, he said, “What do you think of making him?”

That was the moment they would all remember the rest of their lives. MacLaren writes, “There was just a single ambition in those humble homes, to have one of its members at college, and if Domsie approved a lad, then his brothers and sisters would give their wages, and the family would live on skim milk and oat cake, to let him have his chance.”

“Making him.” What a fascinating way of putting it.

From the time my children were small, my frequent prayer was, “Lord, give them teachers who will see something special in them and bring it out, who will believe in them and make them confident in their abilities. ” I now pray that for my eight grandchildren.

So many teachers see themselves as wardens and jailers; God give us teachers who are inspirers and encouragers.

I myself am the product of such teachers. A first grade teacher in Alabama named Marguerite Gilder made me feel loved and gifted. Margaret Meadows, a teacher in a West Virginia three-room schoolhouse who had me in the third, fourth, and fifth grades, and while cutting me no slack and showing no preference for anyone in her classes, treasured us as individuals and set high standards. A husband and wife team in our Alabama high school, J. H. and Loyce Whitson — he taught agriculture to the boys and she taught chemistry and physics to everyone–believed I could do anything I set my mind to and started me thinking about going to college when the idea was a most unlikely fantasy for a coal miner’s kid. In college, it was Marjorie McWhorter, the Birmingham-Southern professor in the education department who saw what no one else did. In seminary, George Harrison, professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, connected with my mind and heart as no one else was able.

You might say, these “made me.”

Everyone should be so blessed.

MacLaren says of Domsie, “(He) had an unerring scent for ‘pairts’ in his laddies. He could detect a scholar in the egg, and prophesied Latinity from a boy that seemed fit only to be a cowherd.”

Let us offer a small prayer here.

“Father, give me eyes to see in others about me, but particularly in the children and youth, what lies unknown to themselves and unseen to everyone else, that these are the children of God, beloved of Heaven, created in Thy image, and made for Thy purposes. Make me an encourager, a blesser, an endower. In a world of discouragement and negativity, make me a positive force in their lives, one who believes in them with hope to give and time to share. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.”