Ack... I Know It's Been A While

And I have every desire to get back into daily devotions and blogging (see how easy it is to get distracted by "life"?). But I wanted to share this experience I had on Sunday night with the senior high youth group.

It's easy to get discouraged some weeks that no spiritual growth is occurring, that the teenagers are apathetic to the Word, and that we're just banging ourselves against an immovable wall in trying to share and model our faith for them. But weeks like this are highly encouraging.

In discussing Easter, I wanted to do something a little different, so I set up a room in the church to be a small sanctuary for our event. There was a cross on the ground, with candles all over it, and I tried to darken the room as much as possible. As the teens came in, I asked them to quiet down and take a sheet of paper to journal thoughts on.

We listened to Luke 22-24 over the course of 25 minutes from my audio Experience Bible. I felt nervous that teens living in a generation that's consumed with multimedia wouldn't be able to sit down and just *listen* for a half hour in the dark. But they did -- they were quiet and respectful and some of them wrote quite a bit on their sheets. At the end I opened it up for discussion, and slowly at first, but then more rapidly, the teens spilled their thoughts on the Last Supper, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. It was totally amazing to hear them get past their apprehensions about discussing faith in front of each other to say some truly deep and thoughtful comments.

God was in that room that night, and I just sat back a bit humbled in the thought that he's going to work in their lives no matter how successful or unsuccessful I might be. As always, it's not about me, it's about him, and it was good.