On being young, restless, and reformed

A few years ago I came across this passage, and even though it's kind of an aside, God used it to minister to my soul. It's become one of my favorite passages in the Bible.

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, a good distance from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp. And it came about, whenever Moses went out to the tent, that all the people would arise and stand, each at the entrance of his tent, and gaze after Moses until he entered the tent. Whenever Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent; and the Lord would speak with Moses. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would arise and worship, each at the entrance of his tent. Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.

Exodus 33:7-11

The older I get (and I'm not even old enough for that to sound like a serious sentence opener), the more I understand why older Christians get so jazzed when they see or talk about young people faithfully attending church. I think I always assumed that any self-respecting church member would be there when the doors were open. Oh yeah, I even wrote about it. Why turn something I had been raised to do since infancy into something nigh heroic?

Then I went to college. So naive. So precious.

All of the sudden I was the one tempted to shave off Wednesday nights, or give mom looks when we were staying too long, or sleep in during Sunday school after being up till 3 the night before. All of the sudden I was rethinking my doctrinal commitments because of the spell of new and previously foreign relationships I was experiencing. All of the sudden I was the person I had been judging this entire time.

And then, after God sent me a wake up call and snapped me out of that funk, I got the chance to truly live on my own for the first time. I had my first experience of "adulting" at church. All of the new friends I made were there because they wanted to be there. There were no parents or rules or precedents. Instead, there were lots of deadlines and homework and social expectations. But you know what? Most of these twenty-somethings made it to church every Sunday. And most of them made it to the midweek student Bible study. And a respectable amount of them were involved in various ministries in the congregation. We're talking PhD students in one of the most prestigious, and therefore demanding, universities in the world. And they never missed church.

Heck, that's understating it. They were devoted to church.

That's when I learned how beautiful that kind of thing is. When I saw these faithful (young) people at church, I was seeing Joshua standing by the tent of meeting. They understood how crucially important meeting together was for successfully taking on the pressures and temptations of the upcoming week. They understood that communing with God together was the best way to spend time with their friends.

We need more young people like that.

A year ago, I would have ended this post with Ecclesiastes 12:1: "Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth...." After reading the subsequent paragraph, though, I've realized how relevant the whole passage is to this situation. When my week isn't anchored in corporate worship, things get funky. When my heart isn't truly in it, my faith weakens and everything gets a little existential.

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, “I have no delight in them”; before the sun and the light, the moon and the stars are darkened, and clouds return after the rain; in the day that the watchmen of the house tremble, and mighty men stoop, the grinding ones stand idle because they are few, and those who look through windows grow dim; and the doors on the street are shut as the sound of the grinding mill is low, and one will arise at the sound of the bird, and all the daughters of song will sing softly. Furthermore, men are afraid of a high place and of terrors on the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags himself along, and the caperberry is ineffective. For man goes to his eternal home while mourners go about in the street. Remember Him before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the well is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “all is vanity!”