'elf Expressions Ezine

One of our residents came to me a couple of years ago on behalf of her nineteen-year-old son, who had shown up the night before quite unexpectedly.

She had not seen him in months. He had hiked for about ten miles and had waited for hours for her to return from work. He was unemployed, had only the clothes on his back, was penniless and desperate. He has a history of grand mal seizures, ADD, ADHD, and God-only-knows what else.

His mother had lost custody of him when he was only three. He's been in and out of various foster homes and group homes. He's been in trouble and served jail time. He's smoked for years, has been into alcohol and drugs, etc.

We rent individual rooms by the week. This woman rented one of them. We allow no visitors in the rooms for many reasons. The boy needed a room of his own, neither had the funds for that.

She made a tearful plea on his behalf; surprisingly, he was well mannered with a "regular" haircut, no piercings or tattoos, and appeared to be clean. They were applying for community assistance, and so we gave him a room on faith.

He had been to a hospital emergency ward the day before and was given several prescriptions ... for what, I have no clue. But they both seemed to have an ample supply of cigarettes. It always puzzles me to see this, when smokes are two to five dollars a pack. No matter what, it seems that this mindset always has money to burn!

What really appalls me is that this young fellow was not an exception, but representative of the present state of this generation!

The description above could be applied to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of young people today. I feel so very sorry for them. They truly are a lost generation.

Most of them have had little or no training in the basics of life. They have few morals or values of any kind. They are practically devoid of self esteem. Most of them are dropouts.

Sadly, some have reproduced already, doomed to repeat this gloomy cycle. They have no hope for the future and live only for the present. Many of them care for no one and nothing. Most all of them are from broken homes and fractured families.

Now, add to that the state of the economy that makes it extremely difficult for them to get even a minimum wage job, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that, if they cannot get some kind of financial assistance through some kind of public assistance program, they are going to get money from somewhere illegally and end up in prison in the process.

It's a vicious cycle of futility devoid of any hope for escape and betterment. In my management position, I've seen the same scenario repeated ad nauseum for the last twenty years, and I've watched the numbers increase at the same time.

And the incumbent administration in Washington is busily engaged in exacerbating these problems.

These kids get an inferior education at best. They graduate high school AND college virtually illiterate. They get no basic training in morality or even in manners.

And if they do get to college, by the time the liberal academia get finished with them after four years, many end up convinced that we somehow evolved from lower forms of life, having been taught as fact a theory that has been proven conclusively erroneous.

So this generation has no hope, no dreams, no visions, no sense of patriotism, no aspirations, no spiritual training, nothing.

Makes you wonder what kind of world their children will see.

Jesus is their only hope, and the powers that be seem determined to squelch every avenue of exposure to Him that these kids might be exposed to, from the classroom to sports arenas, to government buildings and memorials.

And while there are many groups and organizations working desperately to turn the situation around, I am thoroughly convinced that prayer, the most powerful force in the universe, is our best resource.