I have worked with teenagers in some capacity for over 12 years. Teen culture has changed dramatically over the course of those years and the locales that I have been. It seems to me that one of the few, perhaps only consistent thing in teenagers is their inconsistency...yet I have found that many of them are wrestling with some of the most difficult and complex issues that 10, 20, 30 years ago only adults struggled with. They are bombarded by ideas from different people about who they are and who they should be as they genuinely grapple with acceptance, love, death, and depression both in their own self and the others around them(including peers and parents). The tragic thing is that if someone doesn't speak truth into their lives they become adults with the same nagging questions about life, faith, love won and lost, and promises made and broken. I have recently been reminded yet again of the frailness of the human condition, not just teenagers, through a couple of different scenarios. At the same time I am reading the new book by Brennan Manning that someone passed along to me that speaks to the heart of all our issues...realizing the genuine acceptance and love of God just as we are with all of our faults, failures, cracks, and questions. In the back of my head for the last week or so a Bill Mallonee song has been playing. He played a version of it when he did a show at FBC Statesboro nearly 3 years ago. The lyrics are posted below from www.billmallonee.net/
The Kidz on Drugz (or Life) Year: 2004 | Run Time: 5:42
Written by Bill Mallonee for CyBrenJoJosh (BMI) ©2004
i dunno if the kid's on drugs or life
why should that come as a shock
life hasn't fallen out just quite
in those neat suburban boxes
and i wonder about the conversations that you're having
you know the ones with yourself
where you feel like a failure yeah and you're losing heart
and that race has barely gotten started
and you wanna ask God about things like cancer
but you don't think that you'll get much of an answer
i hope you will find and i pray you will see
all the joy that your life brings to me
and the baggage that we all carry around
has this way of dragging you down
and there is no map for this growing up
it's just a street through a town called weird
and you never do feel like you'll arrive
with a destination so unclear
ah but i met this girl with the Holy Ghost
hey she turned me onto the Clash
we made love all night long to Love Tractor and Pylon
but in the morning we played Johnny Cash
and it really shouldn't be so hard
to get yourself free
but with all these lines in the sand and love with its strings
God fear is such a funny thing
I dunno if the kid's on drugs or life
maybe it's a little of both
i know love has this way of holding the day
like that girl with the Holy Ghost
Did You Know?
Bill has said this is one of the hardest songs for him to sing because of the "heart-breaking content." He says, "that song was loosely about a number of kids I've met (and the kid in us all perhaps) who don't have a clue... they come into life with a lot of strikes against them, start trying to awkwardly 'figure it out,' and sometimes get sidetracked for years in the process... I was such a kid... Me? I got lucky: I found the 'Girl with the Holy Ghost who turned me on to the Clash,' as it says in the tune... one of my favorite lines ever."
Disclaimer: The girl with the holy ghost, was Bill's wife, Brenda.
There are days in talking with people that my heart bleeds for them like this song says. "I hope you will find and I pray you will see all the joy that your life brings to me." I'm not 100% sure what the songwriter's intention was, but the more I listen to this song the more I hear the voice of God speaking in those words to all of us who are broken, hurting, struggling, doubting, and questioning. I see that a lot in many of the students I work with and the hope that I have in the cross and the furious longing of God to live in relationship with me is what keeps hoping against all odds that somehow, someway God will speak truth, his truth, his LOVE and ACCEPTANCE into the lives my students and anyone else I come in contact with for that matter.
If the gospel of grace is true, which I firmly believe, then the very heartbeat of God seems to be echoed in the words "all the joy that your life brings to me." God delights in his children, he loves us immeasurably!
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