A Life Quote for Youth Pastors (and everyone else)

"Young men ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis

I somehow keep coming back to this quote in my life, it moves me every time I remember it, and for me it sums up a lot of my life. I like being childlike, I love fantasy, comic books and superheroes. I love the simplicity of my childhood filled with baseball cards, backyard football and building forts. Sometimes when I see action figures or army men I have a rush of excitement. Do you know what I am talking about? I have a boy so in many ways I get to do some of this all over again, thank you Jesus!

I'm also easily bored with most adults and often find them bitter, uninteresting, uninspired and unimaginative like life took them behind the shed and slapped the wonder out of them. I often think adulthood as we have lived it is a farce, like a high school play gone bad. Show some life! Laugh! Be Loud! Get a life purpose beyond the next big promotion, a new car, the next sale or this weekend's party. Remember what it felt like to be innocent and unconcerned with status and have the faith to be like that again.

In many ways I am a romantic, an idealist. I cry at movies and during the olympics. I'm moved by sacrifice, by small acts done with great love. I still believe love wins, that good does triumph and that people can do things(even in the church) out of pure motives. I believe Jesus is the hero of this drama we are in, that He shows us how foolish our adult games are, makes a mockery of them and frees us from the matrix of blahness! He was the court Jester and the King at the same time, laughing at our "maturity" and pointing out our pride for the cancer that it is.

If you feel the same way and if your frustrated because people don't seem to understand you, think your crazy and immature. Quit trying to explain yourself to them, they will never get "it" or you, unless God gets them. Unless they learn the ways of THE FOOL.

Jesus is the King of the Fools, and all who really join Him, who dare to follow, will be labeled as the same.

I say so be it.

Comments

[wifey]

there's the heart that i fell in love with....

[Mr. Bill]

Mark: Just like the intoduction to your book, I love your blog today. It hits home with me as well. It is not an immaturity thing, or a symptom of Peter Pan Syndrom.

I am printing the C.S. Lewis quote and attching it to the wall next to my desk here. Thanks.

[C.S.Lewis]

Way to go Bill! Thanks for liking my quote. Don't ever grow up!

[Ben Kendrew]

Mark thanks for posting this.

Great to hangout with a bunch of fools last night.

Geneva Soccer rules!