March 17 Just a Single Generation

Judges 2:10 After that a whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.

One generation, that's all it takes to forget. A few years ago a professor at BBC retired and passed away within a few years. I remember when he left BBC, people talked about how he would be so greatly missed and how people would never forget him. It took less than two years for our student body to say Dr. Who??? Oh, his students remembered him, but the new generation were not terribly impressed by the stories because they did not share the experience the others had.

Today, we have a generation of second or third generation believers who are walking away from the church, and all kinds of research is being conducted to find out why. I wonder if the last few words of this verse hold the answer: who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.

I think about my children - they grew up churched. But as I reflect on those years I wonder how much of our time together was actually spent rehearsing what God had done for us. I wonder how much time we spent rehearsing how we were blessed by God. Not enough I fear.

It is not that my children have walked away from God. That is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that I think we worked so hard, as first generation believers, to get it right, to do what we were taught, that we missed the simplicity of the gospel - God loved us, and he loved us so much that Jesus gave his life to pay our sin debt. Then he just asked us to love God and love one another.

I grew up in a climate of fear, within and without the church. We had bomb drills where we hid under our school desks or in dark halls, not that I think now that would have done a lot to save us. As children, we lived in fear of the fire alarm that would instead announce an invasion or the dropping of a bomb. And in my church, we lived in fear of the Second Coming and not being ready. That we would not be saved up or confessed up or worked up enough. So we worked hard and tried to remember all of our sins and ask God to forgive us, especially when Communion came around.

SO when it came my turn to parent, I was distracted by duty. Oh, I did love God, but the message I heard was to be busy, to "burn out" for Christ....not so much about taking time to appreciate his love for me, to love him back, and a generation paid the price.

Here we are, given another chance, and in the middle of another generation who found out that duty did not satisfy. They are searching, a we searched. And I pray that we slow down enough and have enough humility to share with them that doing holy things is not where it is at, that God doesn't see a difference between the sacred and the secular. That everything we do can be holy when it is done because we love him.

Maybe we need a refresher course in First Corinthians.