Next Generation Connection

The Unspoken Conversations

Yard work. Dad! Grandpa! It's going to be windy. It's going to be cold. It's going to be awkward.

Men don't talk. We're not built to talk. Enough. We don't share. But when we're working, occasionally we let something slip out. And we do some thinking when we're in motion. You know, we're out here raking and shoveling and grinding and just in motion.

I don't know exactly who the audience is, but I know somebody in the next generation that's younger might eventually—maybe not this decade, maybe not next decade—but you're going to wish that there was a grandpa who cared.

The Wisdom of Age

I'm old enough to be a grandpa. Now I'm no longer just even an uncle or a son or a sibling. I'm old and old people, you know, we don't have the greatest of wisdom, but we do like to prevent other people from doing foolish things.

We can at least tell you what not to do. What doesn't work? We might not be able to tell you exactly how to make it work for your life. But if you're in the business of pain prevention, crime prevention, problem prevention, you don't want to go to prison. You don't want to waste your life. You want to at least have some measure of success.

Listening to old people is not a waste of time.

When Curiosity Dies

It's pretty rare. I mean, old people are supposed to be designed by God to pass along their legacy. And very rare does the next generation listen with intensity.

I can reflect back on my own dear father and my grandpa and the wisdom that I should have gained and what I should have, how I should have gone to work with them more often and listen more frequently. The times of my mom in the garden, digging out the roots and the weeds, hearing something, asking the right questions.

I think a lot of conversations don't happen because curiosity dies. The children stop asking. They stop caring. They don't want to hear it. And that discourages the older generation. And now we don't share. We don't tell because nobody's listening. So why should we talk to ourselves?

Life's Grand Design

Anyway, just a couple of thoughts that I believe my dad and my grandpa would share if I had listened.

Number one: Life is designed very well. That's the real answer now. We can all complain about the design of life. But really, who are we complaining about? Are we complaining about the designer? Question mark. Pause. Think about it now.

If you're going to complain about the designer, you're going to have some major problems, bro. Major problems. Because did you create yourself? Did you make this system?

The Bible says, consider now thy creator in the days of thy youth. It's not even tough yet. You don't even have to cover all the bills. You don't have to go out there. Strive. You think you have a tough life.

The Reality Check

That's probably the essence of what the kids think that all the adults think—you know, we're just saying our life is hard and your life isn't. That's not the essence of it.

What we're saying is life is intentionally, gloriously difficult and complex, particularly when it comes to free will making choices.

You will find that free will is strong evidence that you're an idiot. Very strong evidence that you are a complete imbecile when it comes to handling life situations and how you react to that knowledge.

The sooner you can react to the fact that you don't have it figured out—you are not the king, the captain, the queen. You are not the ultimate anything.

The System Works

But the system is big and the system is good, and the system is not out there to kill you or crush you or destroy you. But it will if you continue to think that you're the king of your own castle and your own determiner of your own future, somehow you're special and you're better, and you're different than the rules of the design of the creator.

This world will chew you up, spit you out.

Lessons from the Streets

I worked with Bill and George, who were hard headed men who had been in the streets, been down the road, faced—they burned a bunch of bridges and relationships. The easy way to say is it was addiction recovery. But that's not the real answer.

The real answer is they got confused and they thought they stopped saying thank you. They stopped glorifying God. They stopped functioning inside their purpose.

These are men that the world would say are outcasts and losers. But that's not God's perspective. He thinks everyone is redeemable up until you give the final rejection to the gospel. God has a plan for you. God is awesome. God is thoughtful. He's amazing.

The Gift of Belief

We worked with these fellas and, you know, on the wall in the office, it said, everybody needs—I give you the gift of believing in your future. I said it slightly differently because, like, everyone needs the gift of someone believing in them.

Especially when you stop believing in yourself, you know, because I'm going to tell you that life is pretty awesome and it's going to teach you some amazing lessons.

The number one lesson that most people can't handle is instructions. Just think, instructions are for idiots. And instructions are something I'm going to learn on my own.

Hello. Good neighbor. How you doing? I guess I'm going to chat with this neighbor. He's going to come over for a minute.