I'll
say it again.
My
heart aches for teens.
As
a 70+ grandfather topped with silver hair and always with my cane,
(and emergency cell phone) I have pain that goes deeper than my arthritis and
other body pain. When my thoughts focus on teens today, my inward
pain overshadows my body's cries for attention.
In unmistakable ways, bodily pain and spiritual pain clammer for my
attention and action. But which do I attend first? And does that
remedy require pills or a process, or maybe a person?
From
the lips of others, and sometimes me too, the labored questions come:
“God
are you doing this to me?
How long is this pain going to last?
Do you
enjoy allowing pain in people?
Have I done something to make you
angry?
Why do Christians that faithfully love and serve You, suffer
pain and imprisoning in unspeakable conditions?
Why God?”
I
want to reach out to teens.
I
know that I don't know.
I
don't know all the reasons why teens act in such extreme ways that
sometimes scare me and my family. I picture the range of youth
struggling with pain rather like an iceberg. By far, the largest part
of an iceberg is under the surface and not noticed at first glance.
This
I do know. God has placed an ongoing burden; a present daily
heartache that moves me to sharing God's love and bone-deep comfort
with youth all around me.
It'd
be so easy for me to turn my silver-topped head the other way and
pretend life for teens is unfixable, except for a group of verses that
tell me (and you) how to achieve, not joy, but FULL JOY. One of the
attributes of this FULL JOY is that it surpasses our ability to describe
it with words. Does this sound too good to be real? It's right in black
and white, that God led Peter to record for us... 1Peter 1:8.
Let's learn of that teen world and how God will enable us to build a strong bridge from Teenage Pain to Full Joy Unspeakable.
