In June the Senior High Ministry at our church traveled to Colorado for Reformed Youth Movement (RYM). I could hardly wait until the bus door closed and we started our trip to and from Colorado! Really, I loved it—24 hour bus ride and all. It was a week of hiking, rafting, mountain biking, ropes courses, horseback riding, attempting to summit a 12,000+ peak, and taking on whatever else the front range of the Rockies threw at us. Each evening we worshipped together with great teaching and a time for small group discussions.
In Stephen Pressfield’s book, Gates of Fire, you have the ancient story of the Spartan’s fabled stand at Thermopylae against the invading Persians, under the leadership of Xerxes. The story of how three hundred Spartan warriors, along with their battle slaves and their Thespaian allies, held back hundreds of thousands Persians for seven days has been recounted many times, first from antiquity by Herodotus in The Histories, and down through ages. In our own day the movie, The Three Hundred keeps this tale alive. The reason it has been told and retold is the same as when it originally happened in 480 B.C. The tale of three hundred Spartans dying to a man to give their fellow countrymen a chance was such a tale of courage, honor, and valor, that it enflamed the passion of the rest of Greece, so that eventually the Greeks rallied to defeat the Persians and Western Civilization was saved.
We live in a culture filled with boredom and cynicism—even among our children. It is a tragic commentary on our culture that you can meet 16 and 17-year-old kids who are apathetic about their own existence and bored much of the time. And it is not only teenagers for whom this is a problem. I meet many young children whose natural curiosity and excitement has already been turned to boredom. How has the insatiable curiosity which occurs so naturally in little children been quenched? Why are there so many bored children and young people in our contemporary society? I do not claim to be a parenting expert, but I would like to propose three causes which I believe foster this boredom in our children.
Psalm 10 beings with the words, “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?Why do you always hide yourself in times of trouble?" It beings with acomplaint, with a doubt or question. There are many such doubtsexpressed in this psalm and in other passages of Scripture. As we readthese words we should consider, for our own lives if it is appropriateto express doubt oneself or to allow one's children and teenagers toexpress their doubts.
Our two daughters were playing in the next room when my wife told me the pregnancy test was positive. Suddenly I knew that this time I wanted a son: someone who would rather score points than cheer for them…someone who would destroy the family budget with his appetite for food instead of matching Barbie accessories.
To be honest, we didn’t know he was a boy. But I thought of him as male simply because I knew I wanted a boy this time. I love my two daughters dearly; now I wanted to love a son.
My wife never shared my enthusiasm for this pregnancy. “Something is wrong…” she’d say, then her words drifted. Two months later, suspicions were confirmed. When bleeding began our doctor lectured us, “You need complete bed rest. If you can’t do it at home, I’ll put you in the hospital!