Life Purpose for Kids

I had a mom come see me today because she was concerned about her twelve year old son who was going down the wrong path. She’s a single parent and I feel really bad for her because her son is aggressive and extremely violent. And he’s ADHD. He watches all the TV shows and movies about murder. He even came home the other day with a gun and ammunition!

His mom had a number of incredible and scary events that she shared with me. Her twelve year old is just an example of the many children in our society. It used to be that kids started working at 13-15 and married young. These days there is this long teenage period where puberty has come earlier, whether due to hormones or whatever, causing this lengthy gap of teenage years from about the age of 10 until we get married in our late twenties.

Many kids today are hurting and struggling. They have tremendous bitterness from divorce, bullying, and other losses. I see it every day when I talk to kids who are going through terrible hurts they never resolved from when they were 8 or 9 years old.

Later this afternoon, I had my Life Purpose for Kids class and it was such an extreme contrast from that lady’s son. This is for kids ages 9-12 and we call them the Tweeners. It used to be that the church had lots of programs for young adults, then their focus turned toward teenagers and now it is this age group, the tweeners that is so important. If we don’t get to them at this age and talk about drugs, sex, life purpose, God, and those kinds of things, we’ll lose them. So, I offer this class geared precisely for their age group.

I started out by having them put a jigsaw puzzle together without the picture from the box. It was about 250 pieces. They had fun scrambling to get each piece in its rightful place. For a while it looked like maybe some pieces were missing, but it all worked out in the end. When it was finally completed, I explained to them that life is like that puzzle. God gives them the pieces of the puzzle every day and we have no picture to know what is happening.

Once the puzzle was finished, I talked about Psalm 139 and explained how God has a plan for their lives:

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Last year when I did this course, I even took the kids to visit a graveyard to read some tombstones. We didn’t do that this year. Instead, I had the kids draw a tombstone and write what they would like to people to stay about them at the end of their life. Then, with that in mind, we talked about the pathway to achieve their goals.

Next, I read them a story I had written about my grandson and an apple tree. It’s called Joseph’s Excellent Bad Day. I think they really enjoyed it as they sat quietly and listened.

We had a test and then coffee break – actually a lemonade break. Our last exercise was for each of the kids make a book mark with their name and its meaning.

I had a good time with the kids and I think they had fun too. It’s clear to me that you’re never too early or too late to start finding your purpose in life. Have you found yours?

Barry