Faith
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. It wasn’t a place, it was a WHO. Jesus Christ, who was in his loins, that’s biblical language by the way, take a look at these two scriptures, and ponder them:
Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’[k] the Son of Man.” John 1:50-51
- [k] He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Genesis 28:12
Take a look at this link > HERE < you’ll see that there are many cross-references, that cross reference [k]
There was another experience I remember. A young man in that Sunday School class had called me to ask about my thoughts on Philippians 3:12:
- Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12-14
I remember being filled with such excitement, God was allowing me a view into this young life, that he was bringing near to himself, God was calling him to draw near! It felt so precious.
Young people, children as yet. Would we hope they might object to such a classification! I remember the other day telling a young man, he was in grade 7, that if he didn’t behave on my bus, I’d treat him like a child, and make him sit up at the front with me and K-grade 2’s. And his answer was, “but I am a child” His name was Andy. I hated Andy. Because Andy wouldn’t connect with me, I always look for and find a connection, that’s my way, but I couldn’t with Andy. Now settle down for a minute there, you didn’t HATE him, but oh yes I did. But as I’ve often said, I may read, and re-read the book of 1 John, looking for loopholes. There are none. Love is the only option. But its equally true what 1 John 1:9 says,
- If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9
The reason I mention this? When Andy said this to me, I was then able to Love him. My heart broke for this young man, that for whatever reason, he didn’t want to grow up! He was caught between child, and adult, and thought an option was available, remain a child.
Am I TELLING YOU something? Please, no! I’m asking you to mull this over. There is a now, there is a TODAY, who are they TODAY.
I mean 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?
But this is about FAITH. 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. This whole paradigm brings to mind a story from my life.
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.
That moment has always stayed with me.
I was the one thrilled with the Octopus.
For Ashton that day there was something else on his mind.
Running Down Vimy 