This last week I was approached by one of the sr high students, a mid high youth leader named Evan Kranz. “I feel like I have a lesson to teach on Sunday.” he tells me.
5pm Sunday evening Evan and I sit down in my office so I can truly hear his heart behind the Word, and fine tune the plan if need be. He nails it. Right out of Romans 6, “slaves to sin, freedom in Christ”, Evans heart is to share the idea of love, and forgiveness, under the title “Rebound”.
A tennis player once said, “It doesn’t matter how good I get, I will never be as good as a wall”
In Evans heart the idea of bouncing back, rebounding back into the arms of Christ, comes alive in the message he shares.
The mid-high youth begin arriving around 6pm, after some chips and salsa we load up and head for the basketball court. We get into a competitive full court game of Basketball, where I got punched in the chest by a certain “Hannah E.” Delaney Chambers calls a time out just to tell a girl that she likes her headband, and sweet quiet Hayley comes alive, ripping that ball out of the competitors hands, blocking shots and just going wild. She was a wild card pick, but dominated the defense.
Jack with the free throws and Jake with the 2’s. Emily showing off and getting aggressive made for an interesting game.
Somewhere in the middle of the game, just before Delaney’s time out, Delaney looks at me, looks at a basketball court on the other side of the fence, looks back at me and asks,
“Can I go recruit that girl to play on our team?”
I look over to see a young girl shooting hoops with her father; “Yes Delaney, yes you can go invite her to play.”
Delaney runs over and moment later returns with a girl named Diana, (the one with the nice headband).
Diana joins in the game, and is quickly noted as one of the MVP’s.
Diana scores the winning point, and leads my team into victory!!!!
Something amazing happened somewhere in here that touched my heart. I had a “proud papa” moment. I got lost in so much of it, from the thought of a youth leading youth, to the sight and reality of the open hand and open heart that Delaney thought to have in the middle of our basketball game. Tell me that the love and light of Christ is not alive in the youth of today, and I’ll tell you that you are wrong! God is alive, he lives in them, He speaks through them, He is here…
