Anna and the teenagers
We just came back from a weekend camp at YoungLife's Sharptop Cove in North Georgia. It is an incredible place. YoungLife does camp the right way - the facilities, activities and food are world class. It is a great get away for teenagers where they are waited on and served by volunteer staff and the Gospel is presented to them in a powerful way. There is tons of fun and goofy skits to get the kids laughing and to get them to lower their walls.

A lot of families from Columbus were up there to witness the camp. YL has a family dorm where the families with small kids can stay. It was packed with Columbus folks and about two dozen kids under 10. Thankfully, we stayed at the adult guest lodge on the other side of the camp!

But I love kids - especially small ones - so it was fun for me to engage with these kids during the weekend. One family had three beautiful daughters ages 4-7. The middle child, Anna was especially captivating. I know both sets of grandparents and she has the eyes of one of her grandmothers. She has a sparkling personality and a great smile. I had fun goofing around with Anna during the meals and later ran into her in the YL store. She smiled at me and said "Hey, what are you doing here?" I think she thought I only existed in the dining hall! I told her I was looking for stuff and she said, "I am getting a harmonica" and she showed me her blue harmonica. "Wow" I exclaimed, "That is the coolest harmonica ever" and she smiled and went on her merry little way.

That harmonica never left Anna's side the rest of the weekend. She was always playing it, always smiling. At dinner Saturday night, she was sitting at the table with all the chaos of a YoungLife dinner (300 kids in one very loud room), minding her own business, playing her harmonica. I looked over at her and she saw me, smiled (she always smiles) and kept on playing. I told her that she was so good at the harmonica and she said, "I know my Mommy and Daddy think I should take lessons" and she kept right on playing. The next day at breakfast she was doing the same thing. Her Dad told me that she spent all day Saturday playing the harmonica and that the teenagers were always circled around her. As Anna played, the teenagers followed. When I was talking to her Sunday, I again commented on her harmonica and again told her that she was very good and she replied, "Some people think it is my talent". Big smile followed.

So here is Anna - beautiful, sweet, happy and very much in love with life and her harmonica. Anna is extraordinary. Anna knows she has a "talent" and she is looking for it. Anna knows she has something special to contribute to the world. Contrasting that are the lives of 300 teenagers. They too are extraordinary but very few of them believe it any more. They very much now believe they are just ordinary. Life comes at the teenagers very hard these days - MUCH harder than I think many of us even realize.

There very much is a battle underway for the souls of our children. Anna, at this point is safe and happy but we know what is coming - we can see it in these teenagers. Don't get me wrong - I love teenagers too but you can very visibly see the scars of battle on them already. Many of these kids have already lost their sexual purity. The vast majority has already started drinking and it is shocking how many are already using drugs. Many of them have bought the world's lies. Religion is simply whatever is relevant to them at that moment - "God just wants me to be happy" or "God is seen through my boyfriend or my friends - and I have a lot of friends so God is happy with me". They live their lives in the pursuit of happiness and for many of them, it has taken them into some very dark places.

It was striking to witness the vast gulf between Anna and many of these teenage girls. Anna is free. They are in bondage. Anna pursues happiness in her own little world and it is innocent...as innocent as happiness found in her harmonica. Anna doesn't understand peer pressure. Anna is happy in her own skin. Teenagers pursue happiness by trying to fit in and by doing whatever the crowd tells them is "right". We witnessed a dozen or so girls all showing up on Saturday morning all dressed just alike. It was freezing cold but they all had on shorts and Ugg boots. Someone in that group decided this is what they were going to wear and like robots, the rest followed. Teenagers have very little tolerance for extraordinary. They crave ordinary. They want to all look alike, act alike, dress alike so they can all blend in and numb the pain that can come from standing apart from the crowd. Many will seemingly sell their soul just to fit in - just to be a part of the "in" crowd. And so...they all become ordinary...just like all the rest of the group. When the group starts having sex, you have sex. When the group moves beyond beer to pot, you start smoking pot. You conform or you are cast-out.

The lie is that if you become ordinary that you will fit in. What you find as you become ordinary is that you have stripped away all that God made you to be. You have given up what an Extraordinary Creator used to make you unique so that the other ordinaries will find you pleasing.

I don't write this to judge any of them. I understand. I was there not long ago. But I write this because it stands in such stark contrast to Anna. She is happy being Anna. She thinks she can play the harmonica and she plays her heart out. She doesn't obsess over dressing like her friends or wearing too much make-up or straightening her hair like "everyone else" does. She has no concept of text messaging, cell phones or Facebook. She is just Anna. She is just one very happy kid. It simply breaks your heart to see the damage the world does when it strips the kid out of a young person and makes them look like every other ordinary young person.

Christ came that we might have life and have it to the full (abundantly). He wants us to be extraordinary not ordinary. He wants us to stand apart from the crowd and to be independent of the world. He wants us leaning on Him. He offers us freedom - great freedom - in the extraordinary life while it is just so obvious the bondage - the terrible bondage - of the ordinary life.

Anna and her harmonica have life to the full. It is no wonder Christ said we must come to him as a child. Eyes wide open, trusting, dependent, every day another great adventure to live, a new audience for our harmonica, another day to...

Soar!