To Save a Life

I’m going to be honest… I struggle with Christian movies. There I said it… I know I’m terrible, but really I just can’t get into them most of the time for various (mainly technical) reasons. But one that although I may have qualms with the caliber of acting and such, the message has struck me and it continues to even years after seeing it (I think I've even blogged about it before). The movie, To Save a Life starts with a teenage kid walking into a youth group and the youth pastor coming up to him and asking the typical questions that all of us in youth ministry have all asked at some point or another, “where do you go to school?” “what grade are you in?” etc… Then the youth pastor gets distracted and walks off and forgets to come back. Low and behold this kid was really hurting and his visit to that youth group was his last attempt to find hope and a sense of belonging. Within minutes we find out that the kid went home and committed suicide. (enter pit in your stomach)

In dealing with youth both in the States and here in Uganda, I have reached a couple of conclusions: 1) teenagers are quite possibly THE best actors on the planet, 2) many of them are dealing with stuff beyond our wildest nightmares, and 3) We’ve all got a past and a story to tell. In previous posts I’ve written about how I’ve learned the importance of learning the names of the kids who walk through the doors and are a part of the youth group. There is a HUGE challenge in pouring into the students that are in a formal ministry. They desperately need to be some place where they feel like they belong, that they’re valued, and that that they’re safe to be who God made them to be.

One thing though is that it’s beginning to hit me is that I have a group of about 30 students who I get to meet with on a regular basis, I know their names, where they go to school, what grade they’re in, what they want to be when they grow up, what their favorite food is, and what even their favorite football (soccer) team is. That’s not bad… but when you live in a town with THOUSANDS of students just like mine, that 30 just doesn’t seem like enough…. You know what I mean? I love, love, love my students. They have my heart and are my most favorite people on the planet next to my husband and my family, but there are so many of their friends and even more than that, there are so many of their enemies that they tell me about and as they share with me about them I realize that there’s a lot more to that problem person than the fact that they’re a bully, or a jealous manipulative girl. I’m not excusing the sin, but really the people my students tell me about are not Christians. They don’t know the sanctifying redeeming work Jesus’ unfailing love can bring in their lives. All they see are the problems in life, the fact that their dad doesn’t want to have anything to do with them, that their family doesn’t have enough money for rent and they don’t know where they’re going to go, etc… Each one of these kids has a story and more than that God knows their story and loves them and desperately wants them to love Him back.

My job, not just as a missionary, but just someone who is called by God to speak into the lives of students, is to point both the kids who are a part of our youth group and those who are so lost they don’t even want to come, to Him. I just pray that I would recognize the opportunities He brings me, that I wouldn’t waste them, or be too “busy” for them.