Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Young AND old together...

Psalm 145:4-7 (NIV)
One generation commends your works to another;
they tell of your mighty acts.
They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty—
and I will meditate on your wonderful works.
They tell of the power of your awesome works—
and I will proclaim your great deeds.
They celebrate your abundant goodness
and joyfully sing of your righteousness.
A healthy inter-generational church is one of the few places where young and old can come together and learn from each other.
"Last Sunday, a teenager named Skylar and a [90-year old] senior named Gene chatted in the hallway between services at our church. ... Three-quarters of a century separates their ages. Gene has great-grandchildren older than Skylar.
On Monday through Saturday their lives could not look more different. But on Sunday mornings, that distance gets reduced to no wider than the space between their chairs.
A healthy church should always look something like this. No matter how big or small the church is, these moments matter." from a blog by Karl Vaters

Lord,
This is the kind of church 
I want to serve. 
A community of faith in which
generations interact 
sharing your love for each other and for the world.

Research shows what families have long known,
young and old need each other.
We are mutually dependent on each other.

Thank you, Lord,
for the youngest of disciples in my church
that remind me of the importance of childlike faith,
for the teenager's passionate hard questions
that push me to think through why I believe,
for the young adults who need faith 
to be real, making a clear difference in daily life,
for the middle adults caring for children as well as aging parents
who need a faith that sustains them,
for the senior adults fearing loneliness and being thought of as unimportant
who have deep faith but who still need encouragement.

Each has a story to tell of your faithfulness;
each has a different need.
Each needs each other.
Thank you, Lord,
that this is the kind of church 
Elizabethtown Presbyterian Church is becoming.

Help us find ways to connect 
across the generations
one telling the other
the stories of God's love.

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