Our kids are under pressure.
I recently read an article in a MESSA teacher's journal that seemed to sum it all up:
The prevailing tendency of modern civilized life is the
overstimulation of children. This tendency pervades our whole
educational system. It permeates juvenile literature, is manifest
in childhood recreations, and has invaded the home. Such overstraining
and stimulation cannot fail to cause harmful effects during childhood,
and produces nervous temperaments later in life. In our environment
of modern-civilized life, the ear and the brain are being shocked
by the screams of the locomotive, the noise of the streetcar,
the rumblings of heavy wagons on stony pavement, and the monotonous
cries of newsboys on our street corners.
The beautiful sleep of childhood is being disturbed and the growing
brain has been made to suffer.
The source of this commentary? The Journal of the American Medical Society, December 10, 1898.
Yup - we've been worrying for a long time about the impact of technology on children. By the grace of God, most kids seem to have survived the "over-stimulation" of literature, locomotives, streetcars, wagons and newsboys - kids are often more resilient than we expect them to be. Yet the pace of their world has only increased, like the technology to which they're now exposed - whether it be MTV, or internet pornography, or the lure of an interactive cyberspace that isolates from community, or the speed of data processing that leaves no time for human interaction. In their world of high-tech, where do our children find a safe touch?
It is in life among the Body of Christ. Kids need something that no school or computer or television can ever give - something timeless, something that roots them to a place where they belong and a people who know their name. They need the absolute assurance that they have a value and worth that is the gift of their God. The answer to childhood stress is Jesus Christ, whose love endures beyond all reason and all time and is free for the taking. And your job as Christians is to shower them with his love and every once in a while remind them who they are and whose they are.
Join us at Good Shepherd the Sundays of September,
my friends. And bring those kids with you.
Pastor Jim
"Let the little children come to me, do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs..."And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. Mark 10:14
Close this window to return to the list of Pastor's Thoughts.
E-mail your comments and questions to Pastor Jim in care of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church at gslc@sirus.com.