Where did the Summer go?!

It is now August. Here in Colorado if you look closely some of the leaves are changing. My oldest is starting kindergarten in one week. The summer is gone my friends and I didn't even get to blink. An age ago, I would be enjoying the last days of my summer. I spent most of my summers at camp working. I spent more time at camp than at home some summers. My parents would told me, "If you want money during the summer you can get a job and earn it that way. Or go volunteer at camp and we will pay you some money for working." So the end of the summer was often the only time that I spent at home.

It was a melancholy joy those last few weeks. It was inevitable that summer would come to an end. Enjoying the last few slept in mornings, relaxing out the emotional knots in my heart from some imagined summer romance, and hoping vainly for change in the new school year. The emotional decompression for the depths of the summer. The momentary bliss between the end of one stage of life and the beginning of another. This in-between time became shorter with each passing year. Until the summer just rolled into the fall without transition. I always thought that would be the best time of my life. When I never had to look forward to the beginning of a school new year. No more new hopes. No more new challenges or new levels to achieve. Never held captive by grades again. Just one never ending agonizing life of freedom and career.

Seeing my child coming up to the starting line of his academic career. I hope that I can appreciate being in-between childhood and studenthood. Relaxing the knots in my heart as I remember him in infancy, toddlerhood, and as preshcooler. I have to see myself in him as he prepares to leave everything behind and take hold of something new.

A world at war

I was listening to this broadcast of Talk of the nation. It was about the talk of this time in history seeming to move towards world war. The professor in this interview says that he does not think that the events as he sees them are moving toward a world at war. I would disagree with him because of the fact that if you carry the events of the Iraq war, terrorist bombings, and Israeli incursion into Lebanon. The world will be at war if these small conflicts continue to brew. Even if the battles are not fought between great national armies but between small bands of terrorists, world war happens when all the world is at war.
It seems almost surreal that I should be talking about the world being at war. All my childhood I was drilled with the mantra of the Cold war. We were taught that the next world war would be like some nuclear holocaust. Media was full of the images of mushroom clouds and radioactive wastelands. I fear that we may yet see this image a reality but in the context of some terrorist act or act of desperation by some nation.
I was reminded how much we need to look to God in times like these by a fellow law enforcement officer. He showed me this article on a book found in a bog in Ireland. The passage in Pslam that is described talks about the nations of the Middle East conspiring to wipe out the nation of Israel. Whether you believe that the passage was found for a purpose or not. God's words still speak to us in so many ways. They live in present, past, and future. I will praise God all the days of my life for the gift of his living words and be confident that he will guide the world events.

The Call of the Generation

My wife and I had a meeting today with a missionary who had been raised in Africa up till the end of high school. I was encourage by what she had to tell me about the prospect of missions in Africa. She told us that in her opinion Africa has been forgotten. I was amazed at the how she talked about living in an unstable country in Africa and being evacuated but she still considered the place her home. Remarkably, she is still on the mission field and continuing work around the globe.
She made a comment that I have heard more than once from people in my generation. She said that our generation (people in their mid to late twenties) seem to be a generation focused on the outward view of life. Our parents generation was more focused on the inward battles of their age and did not seem to understand the need to look toward the needs of the whole world. I agree with her. I heard my best friend say almost the exact same thing. He had been in the military for four years and served his country proudly. His girlfriend has just completed her basic training in the Navy. I was a law enforcement officer. My friend told me that he sees a lot of people our age going out and trying to work to give back to society. We feel this need to contribute something to the greater good and not sit around like previous generations living off the sacrifice of others.
The term "Greatest Generation" has been coined for those who lived through the struggles of the Second World War. It would seem that no generation since then could use that term to describe their generation. I have read books on the jaded nature of generations X and Y. Those opinions may have had an impact on some in my generation to motivate them to try to achieve more. I know that the reason that I got into law enforcement is that I wanted to help and contribute to society. I know that those seem like uptopian ideals that could never be realized but if not be my hand than who will carry the message of Christ to the world. We have been taught in classrooms about the racist and oppressive ideas of colonial Europe and America. Much of the oppression has been tied successfully to missionaries from those countries. It was a bad thing to want to go try to "help" society. So, we tried to come up with short term mission and prayer focuses. Short term missions allowed us to hop in do some good work and leave before we could be accused of trying to oppress the native people. Prayer focus was part of a campaign that was big in the late nineties. We would pray into an area of the map and try to change things not by sending missionaries but professionals who could evangelize while contributing to the work force. Still putting that barrier between us and the natives to help legitamize the work and not lump it in with the past missions work of colonialism.
In the end, we as a generation our trying our hand at changing something about society. We have the examples of generation that did great things with the time God gave them. We also see examples of generations that did not contribute anything to society. We have been accused of not having any substance, and that may be what motivates some to try and bring substance to the world.