Young Life Banquet: part one- Nuggets

This past Friday night, we went to our local Young Life Annual Banquet. The speaker was great and told some stories that were gems. He recounted playing hide-and-seek with his grandson. The goal of the game for this little boy is not to stealthily evade his grandpa, but to be found. He will rustle around in the bedroom closet or somewhere else, excitedly anticipating the moment when he is found by the one who loves him. The speaker then transitioned into how today’s teens are just like his grandson, making noise in closets and wanting to be found.

He quoted Eugene Peterson’s version of scripture from the book of John that explains our motivation for incarnational ministry, saying God put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. He told the story of the YL leader at Columbine from the day of the tragic shooting there. Like many other days, Kevin came on to campus to meet with a student. And like many other days, the student had forgotten, and was a no-show.

So Kevin went into the dining hall and sat down with some students, getting to know them. A short while later, when someone came in announcing the gunshots elsewhere on campus, Kevin was there with and for the teens, diving under the table with them. He eventually helped lead them out to safety and hundreds of students came over to his house that week, processing with him. The speaker made the point that teens don’t need a big program, they need people who will dive under the tables in their lives with them.

Another story he told came from this past week in New Zealand. A Young Life leader there was with a group of 10 people, canyoning. They were pretty far out, when a flash flood came. The river water rose 50 feet in 30 minutes, and 7 out of the group of 10 died. Tony, the leader, was a 29 year-old guy, tall, strong and capable. He could have made it out of the river if he had only considered himself. But he had invited a student named Tommy along on the trip. Tommy had cerebral palsy and was less physically able. Tony refused to let Tommy die alone and did everything in his power to save him. When the survivors and rescuers found their lifeless bodies, Tony had Tommy on his shoulders.

The gospel isn’t incarnational unless it requires sacrifice. Hopefully not an actual physical death, but a sacrifice of comfort, a sacrifice of selfishness, and of time. It takes diving under the tables with people, it takes carrying people on your shoulders. What do you do to lift others up like this? There are as many ways to live it out as there are willing people. These stories inspired me to want to be a person like this. I don’t know what that will look like throughout life, but I want to be attentive to opportunities to make sacrifices for the benefit of others.