Pray for the youth, Pray for the Children

Please pray for our youth. It is a complex world they live in, and they need to be clothed in our prayers. Sometimes I feel that our youth grow up too fast, that they are thrown into the mix so quickly that they miss some of the joys I experienced in my high school years. Their schedules are full of activity, but is there room or time for careful reflection and gentle personal growth of a deeper nature? In an "it's all about me" world, is there any true focus on thinking beyond oneself, in helping others, and in intentionally living the Christian life.. In a world filled with so much greed and self-centeredness, the church cries out for a balance in life. The Bible gives us a path, the Jesus Way, but the world competes savagely for their attention. They need our nurture, our direction, and our prayers.

Proverbs 22:6 is just as true now as when it was written "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Youth are children, especially until they are 18 and in many ways until they are 21, and sometimes beyond that arbitrary age. Training is NOT letting children and youth have their own way all of the time. It involves guidance and leadership by the adults in their lives, and definitely by those who are their parents and by others caring adults who are in the churches they are affiliated with in their young lives. So we must pray fervently for them. It is our Christian duty to pray for them individually each day.

We are living in a time where there is less and less parental training, and more and more influence from the macro-culture and from peers. The vast communications revolution has made television and DVD movies the great electrobic babysitters. The constant struggle to make ends meet financially has forced a great majority of couples to both be working, limiting parental time with children from what the amount it was for centuries. So it is that we live in difficult times, and many of our national problmes are wrought by these societal situations and their impact on contempory lives. All the more we find the need to get down on our knees and to pray for our children and youth.