I shared for a few minutes last night with about 75 high schoolers.  I told them I'd been watching the news a lot lately and I've decided the world is a mess...

I told them that my generation owes their generation an apology, not because the world is a mess, but because
we've done very little to fix it.  We've handed out bibles when we should've handed out food, clothes, and love. We've handed out judgments when we should've handed out blessings.  We've handed out political answers when we should've offered His Spirit of grace and forgiveness.  We've been mostly "lawmen", when what the world really needed was "Christ-men".

One of my pastors used to say "the world won't see Christ in us until we see Christ in us".  John reminds us in his first epistle of this fact - "as He is, so are we in this world".  Listen to me, we are what they've been looking for, we are the answer they've needed all along.  The
breakdown didn't come because they didn't understand who we were, the breakdown came because we didn't understand who we were.

Christ didn't die on the cross to just get us out of hell; He died so that He could restore our purpose for being here in the first place.  We are to be Him with skin on in this world.  We are to love like Him, care like Him, hand out mercy like Him, and even die for people we don't like, like Him.  I didn't say it was easy, but I am saying its right.

We haven't kept our part of the original deal "to bring the fruitfulness of the garden to the barrenness of the earth".  We like Adam were created outside of the garden and then placed into its beauty.  This happened so that we could have a vision of what we are to create in the rest of the world.  This is more than voting for the right party, going to the right church, or having the right doctrine, it's about us getting into the mess and being Christ in the middle of it.

So we owe the generation behind us an apology for not doing our part and for not properly instructing them about their part.

I see great hope in this next generation.  I see the answers we've all been looking for.  I believe they just may be the ones that actually get this stuff and do something with it...