I went to a soccer match at South Lyon High the other day to watch our neighbor’s son play. I stood with his dad and some other dads along the fence as we watched. (You know how dads always stand up at the fence rather than sitting down!) As we watched, the football team practicing in the distance, it took me back to when I played that kind of football growing up. I remember those practices, the Friday nights with the lights on in the cool of the fall evenings.
The kids on the field and in the distance practicing were all in high school, all under twenty years of age. I started thinking: If they live to be eighty, they still have over three-quarters of their lives ahead of them. What will these next sixty to seventy years of their lives bring? What will they have accomplished as they someday stand alongside a fence watching their children or grandchildren?
We are told in scripture that almost all of the people who saw God powerfully rescue them from Egypt were not allowed to enter the Promised Land. (Numbers 13-14, 32:11). The only people to enter from that generation were Joshua and Caleb. Everyone else who entered was under twenty when God’s people left Egypt. It wasn’t the generation that left Egypt that did the great things through the power of God as they crossed over into the land God had promised to a few generations earlier. It was the younger generation, the generation that “was to come.”
Our society calls the generation that is slowly passing away, the greatest generation of all time. And on the world’s stage, they had some tremendous accomplishments, from putting an end to the Nazi aggression to giving birth to the Baby Boomers! It is hard to argue with what that generation experienced and did.
What about this next generation, those out on the field, in the classroom on the stage at school? They may not be able to accomplish what the “greatest generation” did in the world, but what about that which is beyond this world? What can they do for the kingdom of God? What great things can be done through their abilities, their talents? What can this generation accomplish?
One thing we need to be doing for this generation is preparing them for their service in the kingdom. It starts with prayer, for them and for their parents. Next Sunday, we will be praying for our kids as they head back to school, but really we need to be praying for them daily. Pray for what they can accomplish and how they can change the world for our Heavenly Father.
Praying for the Next Great Generation!
Randy
