To the YouTube Generation!

Why do people feel their lives are meaningless? Why do people feel empty? Why do they have the need to fill the emptiness with sex, drugs, and violence or video games and blogs? Do people really get a pure and refreshing pleasure from these stupid pursuits? Is their pleasure truly untainted with guilt or shame? Or are they just too lost and confused to even be aware of the wrongness of their lives instead of the rightness that they really need and desire and could claim as their own, if only they would?

Do these questions resonate in you and in your self-chosen lifestyle? Do you think that forgetting your miserable life for a few hours in front of a boob-tube (YouTube) or posting inanely self-indulgent drivel on a blog will somehow answer all your problems and your sense of being lost in a great big universe? Do you honestly believe that you can manufacture meaning out of chaos, beauty out of repulsiveness? Most of us do and therein we are lost. And for folks like that, bad is good, pain is joy and death is life

And indeed, you are not just feeling lost. You really are lost. Your life has no ultimate goodness in itself. If you are really honest with yourself, when you're all alone, with no mask to wear, you will admit that when you look out upon the world all you see is a wasteland and a wilderness where no green thing grows, where there is no refreshing spring to slake your thirst. There is for you no grassy bank on which to lay your weary head, no rest, no peace, no comfort.

You are lost. You are lost in a world not of your own making; lost in a world that once was pristine and pure and infinitely beautiful and meaningful but now is gritty and dirty and dark. It is a wasteland that once was a garden; a wilderness that once was Paradise.

There is a story of a woman who once came to a well to get some water. She was hot and dirty. It was the middle of the afternoon and flies were buzzing. The jug she carried was heavy and it would be much heavier still when she finally filled it with water and brought it back to the man she was shacked-up with in the sleepy town of Sychar not far away. When she got to the well, she met a stranger; a man resting, who said to her “Give me a drink.” She said in turn “Why are you asking me this since I am a woman and a Samaritan at that.” [She supposed the man at the well to be a Jew and Jews and Samaritans hated one another.] The man answered, “If you only knew who I am, you would ask me for living water and I would give it to you.” Whereupon she said with some contempt, “Who are you then? I see you have no bucket to lower into the well, so how are you going to give me any water at all?” He answering said, “Everyone who drinks of the water in this well will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

This woman was confronted by a reality that broke into her miserable fantasy of a life. She did not see it coming; did not understand what was happening. She resisted it at first and got angry because she did not want to admit that her life was empty and devoid of purpose, goodness, peace and joy. And yet before the encounter with this stranger was over her life was at least beginning to change, for she went back into town and started telling people that she had met with someone who told her all about herself and her grubby little life. And instead of causing her more pain, more despair, more hopelessness; this encounter gave her life something it had never had before. She only needed to start from where she was. You see, it wasn't about her or what she could do. She didn't need to do anything for the gift of living water except to ASK. That's all. Likewise, it's not about you or what you can do to earn this living water. No, it's all about grace which is a free gift and unmerited favour. All you have to do is ask, and then accept without hesitation.

“Ho! Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk Without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you….”

"Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

Stop and think! Don’t close your browser or go off some where else!

Find out more….then come back and talk to me.

Or visit my Website at New Vineyard.