When you’re young, it’s easy to think that your faith will only impact people who are about your same age. It’s easy to assume that you’ll probably just share your testimony in youth group or Bible study, and that barring some unusual circumstances, the story of your life (so far) isn’t anything that will impact folks who are ten or twenty (or more) years ahead of you.
But not so fast, my friend. I have a (short) story for you.
About twenty years ago I moved to Baton Rouge because, well, I was a newlywed, and that’s where my husband lived, and generally it’s a solid idea for married people to live in the same place. I didn’t know a soul in my new town other than the man I’d just married, and after a lifetime of living in my home state of Mississippi, the adjustment to life in south Louisiana was more difficult than I expected. The culture was livelier, the people seemed more outspoken, and there was a meat combo called turducken that flat-out confused me (Google it). In so many ways, I felt like a fish out of water.
When I started a high school teaching job, I didn’t really know what to expect since I’d never taught at a Christian school. I was sick with nerves on the first day. In addition to working in a new place, I also had to master saying all the French-infused last names on my class rosters. The whole experience felt super intimidating, and I wondered if I’d ever feel at home there.
Within a couple of months, though, I experienced two big epiphanies: (1) I’d never been in an environment—as an adult, at least—where Scripture was part of everything we did, and (2) my students made me feel incredibly welcome. It’s a strange thing, being an outsider in a school full of people who have known each other for most of their lives, so I was taken aback, really, by how sweetly those kids cared for me. They asked questions about my family, they told me stories about theirs (and not in that way that teenagers sometimes do when they’re trying to get a teacher off the subject). They were respectful and hardworking—almost to a fault—and they were disarmingly relational. It wasn’t long before I was looking forward to seeing them every day.
And in the most natural, organic way, they started to tell me more about themselves: how they were doing in their relationships with the Lord, what they were learning at church, how they might be struggling, and why they’d learned all the choreography to Britney Spears’s latest song. We weren’t friends, exactly, because I was their teacher, but we worshiped at chapel services together, we prayed together, and we laughed together.
In a place where I knew next-to-no-one, those kids were like family. Those kids were like home.
They made an enormous difference in my life despite our ten-year age difference. They were willing to be welcoming. They were willing to be open about their faith. And they were even willing to love a new teacher with a super-strong Mississippi accent.
So today, look for the places in your life where the Lord might use you to be a difference maker across generations. He shines in you and through you—no matter how old you are or they are. So reach out to someone who needs some Light.
1. Have you ever been in a situation where you were “the new person”? How did you handle that? And if not, have you ever thought about what it’s like to be a new person in a strange environment?
2. Have you ever thought about ways that your faith could impact someone who’s older or younger than you are? List a few specifics.
3. Do you remember a class, a trip, a date, or an event that you expected to be no fun at all, but then somehow it turned out to be a blast? What can we learn from those kinds of surprises?
4. Can you think of some people in your life who might be lonely? List their names here, and pray about how the Lord might have you minister to them.
Today’s Prayer