TITLE: Generation Infuencers By Sandra DeHoogh 10/01/08 |
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Have you ever felt or longed for passion, a total sense of completeness to rise up from somewhere in the core of you? To be able to breath in deeply and drink in a depth of value and purpose even in the face of obvious suffering be it personal or imposed?
This completeness is a treasure that money can't buy, position can’t demand and family can’t consistently deliver and is bestowed by grace, maintained by humble relationship and wincingly expanded by suffering. We recognize it’s fruit embellished in the lives of some around us, being drawn to it hungrily and basking in the overflow like a child to ice-cream. Without it’s presence in our lives, we frantically grasp at band aids trying to anesthetize the emptiness with activity, food, stuff, fame.
Here is a place of rest yet amazing productivity, exhilarating fun yet sobering responsibility, absolute adoration yet paralyzing fear yet is so potent, that even if only embraced by a few, communities enjoy the fragments of crumbs left in it’s wake. So concentrated that this essence will leave an amazing legacy for decades of generations although it’s abandonment results in total degradation of society.
So valued throughout history, nations were founded and cultured around building a framework to protect and encourage it’s growth. Sadly, ownership of this substance dies with each individual, expanding into generations but the protocol and traditions linger leaving a habit but void of motive, passion or clue to it’s origin. Amazingly, these traditions still incur some beneficial results, some would call them manners or proper behavior but with our hearts left behind having limited memory of this treasure we are chasing, direction eludes us. Life has no target, purposelessness and boredom replace the coveted passion and completeness and we randomly wonder away from it’s source, each generation seemingly a little more distant and ignorant than the last.
Where did we loose this essence that we would lay our lives down for? And for some, not having even tasted it, how do we find something we don’t really realize we lost? Isn’t this all there is? Aren't’ we to expect people to continually decline morally? Why pursue something that seems like the wind and if it were caught, how would it be felt it anyway, now emotionally illiterate and numb?
Our children are asking these questions. They are desperate to live life to the full, to experience and embrace a deep satisfaction. Where are the answers? Silently they look to the generations before them and find that passion has been suffocated by expectation and responsibility. They look to their peers and find behavior motivated solely to elicit acceptance, purpose and love. Are they to be left alone in their pursuit of fulfillment their only hope to stumble over it by chance? Can’t anyone point them at least in the right direction or are they to loose all hope and resign into lipid passivity as others have before them?
The answer to that is a resounding NO!!. They were designed to live from the heart, to be fully alive with abundant energy, freedom and an amazing sense of purpose. Although no one can claim to provide answers to all of life's questions, there are people able and prepared to stand as “signposts” and point to the source of completeness, who can show them a substance of incredible depth, of One who is waiting to restore relationship, renewing passion and purpose.
You can put these people in reach of our generation’s children as mentors and inspirers. You can become such a person. You were created for such a time as this.
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