I love to have conversations with folks about faith, but a young person in particular. I have been imagining what it would be like to be in the midst of a group of youth, like you might encounter in a church setting.
I remember when I was a Sunday School teacher at Richmond Alliance, and my class was teenagers. At the time I was just 10 years or so older than they. I can still remember the wall flowers, the edge huggers, the eager ones and the faceless ones. I also remember being just as much concerned with myself, also. Is this a Self critique? I was a young one, too! I was yet discovering ME. A vivid memory is after a particularly engaging Bible Study one of them came up to me and asked, “Why are YOU a bus driver?” He was mystified by the paradox of having been led into the presence of God, by a bus driver.
You know where my mind goes? To Jacob waking up after that dream, and building an altar there. Because he thought he’d fallen asleep where heaven an earth me, not realizing that it was HE that was where heaven and earth would meet one day. Jesus Christ, who was in his loins,
I remember how thrilled I became when one of them asked me about a scripture: Philippians 3:12, I saw it as God calling him to dare to draw near.
Young people, children as yet. Would we hope they might object to such a classification.
Being a child, is that ok?
What about those times we scold by accusing the whining youngster of acting childish?
Is there space for children to be children? To be present in their NOW?
One wonders how to bring about their curiosity into the things of Faith.
I remember a scripture,
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Another comes to mind Hebrews 5:11–14 that seems to scold that listeners ought be mature by now, eating solid food rather than merely milk. The concern is that we ought to become mature. But what about Jesus saying that we must come to the Father as a child? Are these a contradiction to that?
But what about those youth? The ones who have been brought up in a Christian home by Christian parents. Some will be there who are friends of children that have Christian parents. What brings them here? One has to wonder.
As I recall now another Scripture, several actually, but John 2:23–25 was the first, and then John 1:39’s words to two seekers, Jesus’ reply to their question was come and see. John 6 is a storm in 1–2 parts. Jesus having compassion on folks who had found themselves at in the middle of nowhere, with no food to physically sustain them, so he miraculously provides for them. And then they hang around and chase him, so that they can continue to eat food they didn’t have to labour for.
That was part of the curse in Genesis. Once upon a time there was a garden (as Strolled with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening), at the start, a before we decide to venture into a literal one? What about the power of the story?
Jesus told them who he is, what he is, in terms that didn’t satisfy their wants. Their wish list, their needs (can we picture them with their shopping list & their basket on wheels, perhaps a crying toddler strapped into the cart’s little seat. Their hair is messy, and the brow a bit sweaty, the heart pounding, as the deadline of laundry, dishes to be washed, dinner to be prepared, vacuuming, tidying up.
And Jesus words fell dead on their ears. They left them grumbling, and walking away because when they sought clarification, is it just me or did they mandate their staying or going on an obvious thing? Their question came forward to Jesus, and instead to take them to the answer, there was that an interesting point to see? When the rabble start to band together & they become a community, it is their mutual needs and interests that unite them, and make them a force to be reckoned with. But Jesus, did he care about their force? John 2:23–25 says he did not “entrust himself” to them. What does that mean?
There’s crass ways of saying I don’t care, and what I mean by that is that your opinion or force will not shape me nor effect me, it will not impact me.
Even if I love you dearly, if you grab a gun and hold it to the head of the one you are grabbing by the throat… yes a hostage. Do you see the hostage’s face? Is my relationship with you our friendship will die unless I submit to your demands. I’ll leave that there for now.
But we’ve walked a long way into this forest of ideas, lets take a leap back.
We’re in a room full of youth, who are yet children. whether they are offended or not, they are each and everyone of them, worried about what the others in the room think of them. All are afraid of their inner thoughts being made known, they’d be horrified if a device were brought in that projected their inner lives & thoughts & such onto a screen. But maybe when they saw how painfully alike they all are, they’d settle down? IDK.
So here we are at Hebrews 11:6
AND Apart from faith it is impossible to please God
because anyone who comes to him must believe he exists
and that he rewards those who diligently seek him.
There’s no fence, just the open sea
what holds ya back from summing
faster out into the great beyond?
If your attitude is “This is boring”
…not satisfying, doesn’t float
your boat
anywhere but here seems like a good option
…you’d use your 5 senses to feel your way forward
sight – eyes
touch – skin
smell – nose
taste – tongue
sounds – ears
And this reminds me of something…
The Octopus Story
My son Ashton grew up going to The Vancouver Aquarium. Very early on we learned that the best thing to do for the young man was to get season passes. This took the pressure off of us trying to “get our money’s worth,” and the way it did that was he could look at whatever he wanted to look at, whatever caught his interest.
We would walk along at our own pace. He would sometimes run ahead, but not too far out of reach, and every once in a while he would come running back to make sure we were still there. So all of his discoveries were quite honestly his own—nothing that we shoved down his throat. We just provided him with the environment, and he really loved it.
Then there came a day when he was maybe 10 to 12 years old, and we were in that same routine, walking through the Aquarium. We also of course had our own interest, things that we like to see. One of them for me was the octopus.
They kept him in a small tank compared to all the other sizes. It was small. This particular day the octopus was out in all his glory. He was big and puffy and red—his feet, I guess they were—his legs were dangling down in front of us. The tank was maybe 8 feet high by 4’ x 4’. And there was a rock there, and a cave, I suppose, seaweed and various other underwater plants, and some fish swimming around.
And I wondered why this great beast was not snacking on the fish.
So just within reach of me, I saw a man who had a name tag on, and I don’t know what it said, but I figured he was an Aquarium guy, so I asked him, “Hey how come the octopus ain’t eating the fish?”
Well, he immediately told me that they kept the octopus very well fed, and that meant the octopus simply wasn’t hungry.
Not very satisfied with this answer, I turned to my son who had noticed the octopus and had already begun walking to some other interest of his, and I said, “Hey Ashton, how come the octopus isn’t eating the fish?”
You know it’s not so much the answer that Ashton gave me that always brings this story to its full significance for me, but the way that he gave it.
He was bored with the information. He was irritated that I was interrupting his flow. And he was quite confident.
He said, “They eat crustaceans.”
So being the beggar of a father that I am I waited until I got home, because back in those days I didn’t have a phone with the capabilities that I do now, and I googled it and found out that lo and behold octopus eat fish that don’t share their toys, also known as shellfish.
I didn’t make the octopus come out.
I didn’t make my son see it.
I just brought him there… and stayed near.
And when something real appeared—
he knew it.
The Bible tells me as a father, not to exasperate my children.
The presence of God when in the presence of other believers, gathered to worship, is tangible.
Is it a sixth sense? The ability to know God?
But we skipped the verse there.
Hebrews 11:6… but as I peered back Hebrews 10:32 is there… “remember those early days”
and even further Hebrews 10:19 →
the heading is “A CALL TO PERSEVERE IN FAITH”
run ahead to the LAST VERSE in chapter 10 there:
He 10:39
“But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.”
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is…
It’s foreign… it’s a mysterious concept.
FAITH
yet it’s vital, and verse six seems to get to the point.
The point is to PLEASE GOD
Judges 17:6, and 21:25 → doing what seems right to me
Deuteronomy 12:8
Proverbs 14:12 & 16:25
Deuteronomy 13:18 → Doing what is right in God’s eyes.
But I’m a fisherman…
…what fish am I looking for or hoping for?
The octopus story comes to mind.
Crustaceans…
if I set a hook unto a fish that doesn’t share its ways (a shellfish) & fling it into the water, and wait, you’d be right to giggle if you saw me on the edge of my bath tub
but if I was in the spot on the ocean where there’s rocks and things for them to hide in, now proper means, you’d perhaps soon see me drag up an octopus…
so it’s my life lived in pursuit of God that is my alone…
Running Down Vimy 