I don’t think many of the students cared about which came first, the chicken or the egg, but when we did talk to them about making a relationship with God seem tangible…we had their attention. In my small group we had a really great learning moment, we were having our usual chat when all of a sudden it was interrupted by the small group in the classroom next to ours. There was yelling and screaming coming from the 7th grade guys and my 8th graders were annoyed. I asked them, “Why are you all annoyed?” and they said, because we can’t have a meaningful conversation. And I responded, “Because of the noise?” and they said, “Yeah.” Door open.
We began to discuss the noise in our world and how it holds us back from having a meaningful conversation with God. We talked about how many of us will try to pray with music on or we will try to pray in a room where people are talking or the television is blasting and in the end praying doesn’t seem substantial.
What I learned from this first week is that we need to help our students find silence and find it consistently. If we want prayer to be consistent we are going to have to find a place and a time that is going to allow us focused prayer. I know sitting in silence is a challenge, but it really isn’t much of one if we don’t try. Finding silence is going to be a paradigm shift for these teens. I have a feeling this series is going to be challenging for our student; yet, eye opening at the same time.