So, one of the things that I get to, you probably know this, I've said it a thousand times,

I get to work with not only college students and young adults, but also with junior high students, high school students.

In fact, sometimes the summer is a shift from the college students. We sent them away basically last weekend with their last weekend on campus.

And we, there's a couple different colleges in campus, colleges in town, so they have been dispersed slowly.

But this is the first kind of free weekend, essentially, with not all of our students back here. So I get to work now with more high school students, junior high students.

One of the things that I, it's not my heart to share with a lot of them is something contrary to what they get a lot.

So what a lot of young people get is your best days are ahead of you, which is probably true for a lot of them, probably true for most of them.

In fact, maybe is even true for every one of them, but that idea, like your best days are ahead of you, that's a really encouraging thought.

And I love that, it's really beautiful and powerful and helpful.

But one of the things that I find myself constantly coming back to is also reminding them of the opposite.

I'm saying yes, it may be true that your best days are ahead of you, but it is also very likely true that your worst days are ahead of you.

And that's one of those like, I'm like, wow, wow, kind of bummer things, but and also keep this in mind.

I know we have college students and we have high school, we even have junior high students that we've been able to work with and do ministry with who.

The depth to which they've experienced pain in their young lives is remarkable. It's not as if they've had.

Traum lives are easy lives up to this point. It's not like they've been spared grief or loss. I mean, there's some of our students, some of our even, again, junior high students sixth grade.

Have experienced more pain than most people could imagine.

At the same time, it's also likely very true that for every one of them, including for myself, our worst days are ahead of us.

And that shouldn't be a surprise. I mean, in fact, there are some things that I would say that certain realities of life that shouldn't be a surprise for us. In fact, what's an example on the most minor level, something that shouldn't ever we should never be surprised by interruptions.

I know that's one of the things it's a small thing, right?

But one of the things I find myself being surprised by is I have a plan and then someone interrupts the plan and I'm shocked. That should never be a surprise. It should never be a shocked anyone because we know that's what happens. We have plans, we have calendars, we have schedules.

And then what happens is they get interrupted. So we should never be shocked by interruptions. We should never also, we should never be shocked by our own weakness.

Like if we've ever paid attention to ourselves, we find ourselves falling into some kind of falling out of weakness.

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