Every day bad things happen.
I am no fool to think that we live in a utopia or that life is always sunshine. Working with teenagers gives me a certain clarity that is often lost on pretentious adults who love to hide reality in a flurry of smoke and mirrors. Teenagers are not sophisticated enough liars to hide well their feeling as are adults. They have not yet had years and years to perfect hypocrisy.
Which makes the job of loving teens both simple and complex, thrilling and sobering. The thread of childhood has not yet been torn though our world is tearing harder and harder each day; the innocence of youth still lingers, even if only as a half-forgotten dream. But the torch bearers–the ones who are to light the way, the heroes–have fallen or worse yet have dashed out the light. “There is no hope,” we cry with our selfish complacency.
So much of the pain I see in the hearts of our young people comes from wounds dealt by our own hand. Abusive fathers do not just strike a jaw, they shatter a heart. Selfish mothers do more than extract a fetus, they devalue the siblings of the unborn. Bickering parents swing the verbal swords to wound each other and slain souls of children lay scattered everywhere. We tell them with our actions that this life is just not worth it.
With all of the pain of this life, why stay?
A song my father introduced me to comes to mind–How Do You Get That Lonely by Blaine Larsen:
It was just another story written on the second page
Underneath the Tiger’s football score
It said he was only eighteen, a boy about my age
They found him face down on the bedroom floorThere’ll be services on Friday at the Lawrence Funeral Home
Then out on Mooresville highway, they’ll lay him ‘neath a stone…(Chorus)
How do you get that lonely, how do you hurt that bad
To make you make the call, that havin’ no life at all
Is better than the life that you had
How do you feel so empty, you want to let it all go
How do you get that lonely… and nobody knowDid his girlfriend break up with him, did he buy or steal that gun?
Did he lose a fight with drugs or alcohol?
Did his Mom and Daddy forget to say I love you son?
Did no one see the writing on the wall?I’m not blamin’ anybody, we all do the best we can
I know hindsight’s 20/20, but I still don’t understand…(Chorus)
How do you get that lonely, how do you hurt that bad
To make you make the call, that havin’ no life at all
Is better than the life that you had
How do you feel so empty, you want to let it all go
How do you get that lonely… and nobody knowIt was just another story printed on the second page
Underneath the Tiger’s football score…
Do we leave it there? Is this the conclusion of the whole matter? When our children look to the future and see nothing but fallen heroes and pain, is there nothing left to say? Hope, as Emily Dickenson points out, is a thing with feathers. We are not condemned to repeat the failures of our predecessors or our peers; the gravity of destiny does not have to pull us down to our death.
The beauty of God’s love and power is that it is promised to individuals. So much of the Bible is addressed to people who trusted God even though everyone around them had gone astray. There is hope, but so many people feel shackled by the cycle of history–“if they couldn’t make it, how can I?” But God’s plan is so amazing and, yes, so exciting because he takes the most unlikely to do anything of significance and uses them to accomplish great things.
The key? Reliance upon God. When the eyes turn to those around us, we see weak and fallen men. When the eyes turn inward, we see the frailty and corruption that no one else can. Only when the eyes are turned to heaven and we fall helpless to our knees can we know true strength and true purpose.
