Revival

As I mentioned yesterday, we are currently having a Youth Revival. Our Friends from Vortex have come with amazing enthusiasm and are sharing the Gospel with our Young People. We have had a number of children come to the first two nights, most of whom are 13 and below. The comment was made that we have less older teens than last year, a true statement that involves a number of answers, but answers that can be summed up in one word - parents.

I grew up with wonderful parents who, when they made a decision, considered my sisters and I and how that decision might affect us. Indeed, most of their decisions were based on what was best for the children, and this created a remarkable amount of stability in our lives. For many of the children we deal with at The Salvation Army, the opposite is true. Some parents can become affected by the smallest of issues and make knee-jerk reactions while their children become victims of these decisions. For some it is infidelity, another drugs, another will bring abuse into the home while somebody else just doesn't care and the children go uncorrected. Some of our children no longer come because their parents have fallen out with another Church member so they either go to another Church or nowhere at all, and the children are made to leave their friends behind, and the Church family that has loved them. Why can't people resolve their differences?

Having said all of that, there are many wonderful children who continue to come to The Salvation Army and are supported by their parents, even if the parents don't attend the Church - and our hope continues. Hope is seen in the faces and lives of so many of our children, hope drives us to believe that those who we haven't seen for a while will not forget, and hope tells us that in God's plan we have planted seeds. Thank God for hope.