Generation gap

 The older I get the more I realise that there's a serious design flaw in human beings.  We age.  😀  By which I mean we are all moving forward through time and therefore none of us can know what the generation in front of us is experiencing.   I don't know what its like to be 80.  My kids don't know what its like to be 30 or 40 or 50.   And that is problematic because it means that there's a disconnect between every age and stage of life.  While we can all look backwards and know what it is to be younger than we are now, none of us can know what is coming to us.  At 55 I suddenly feel that I've moved from one generation to the next and Im now ' the older generation' - I find that thought somewhat disconcerting.

 

This rather philosophical thought has been tumbling round my otherwise empty brain today as Ive seen several TV adverts for the Facebook Portal.  All of them are selling the fact that Grandparents don't get to see their grandchildren as much as they would like to and that the Portal can solve this problem.    But the dilemma is that the whole premise relies on the fact that parents and grandchildren both understand the need of grandparents to have that contact.   And I'm not entirely sure that they do.

Two of my three boys have now pretty much left home and Im reflecting quite a bit on my own departure to university in 1984.   As a fresh-faced 18 year old I had no concept of what my parents might have been feeling as I left home.  No mobile phones in those days, just a weekly phonecall to a payphone in the lobby of the halls of residence and a weekly letter from my dutiful Mum.  I was way too excited and preoccupied with making a new life for myself to think much about the folks back home.  And Sam and Josh are just the same.  They obviously have much more opportunity to keep in contact since the advent of the mobile phone. But they don't really know how I feel about them being away.  They can't.  Just as I can't know how my 80 yr old mother feels about my life far away in Ireland or her grandchildren who are seldom in touch with her.   Just as my 35 year old pastor cant really quite grasp how the generation above him feels about church.  

God tells us to honour our father and mother in the ten commandments.  Perhaps this is an acknowledgement that we are never going to fully understand the generation above us so we must respect, consider, value and highly esteem them, trusting that their experiences and wisdom are both highly valuable and also soon to be our own.   In a way our honouring of our elders is an act of faith.  And also an act of obedience.  Im only starting to understand this now as Im becoming old myself. ( I wish Id understood it more when I was much younger........ but then that's exactly the point! 😀)

This Christmas lets try not to presume about or judge the next generation up.  We are not yet in their shoes so we can't know what they feel, expect, need or want.  We can ask and listen carefully.  We can try not to overlay our own agenda in that ' elder brother' superiority I was talking about yesterday.  We can ask God for grace and insight and wisdom to behave with respect and care.