Way back in 1982, when I graduated from high school, as with every Senior Class, we voted on our class song. Along with the tradition, somewhat sappy songs about life and love, some of our more edgy Seniors contributed the idea of Bob Seger’s song, Turn the Page.
Not that I was all that edgy when I was 18, the idea of choosing Turn the Page, if for no other reason than to snub all the girls and the preps in our school, became appealing. Soon enough, many of us began a strong campaign to choose that song. Wonderfully enough, we succeeded. So, for the class song of 1982 for McMinn County High School in East Tennessee, Turn the Page reflected our thoughts about graduation and life to come.
I did not know then what I know now, that we were the leading edge of a new generation that had taken a markedly different look and feel than the Boomers who were my sister’s generation. We had grown up amid the increasingly disillusioned time of Watergate, Vietnam and then we started coming of age during the excessive “Me” decade of the 80s.
Now as a pastor of a church that operates in a focus on this same young adult generation, I look back at Seger’s song with a bit of a twist. We stand now upon the complete turn in a new millennium. We are alive now in the midst of elections that clearly reflect the convoluted time, the split personality of our nation. It is time for us to turn a page from this period towards a more Godly time.
How can that happen, you might wonder? Well, it’s really simple but a costly answer. First we pray. “If my people will. . .pray. . .I will heal their land,” says the Lord. Secondly, we actually live our lives as ones that have already turned the page. “I beg you. . .to live your lives as worthy of the calling, in a manner that proves God has called you,” so wrote the Apostle Paul to the church at Ephesus.
Sometimes it seems we are more interested in legislating how everyone else should live without actually living our lives as ones that do know Him. And that is simple, but costly to do. It costs us everything. “If you would follow me, then you must deny yourself and give up your life.”
Jesus’ haunting words hopefully ring clear as you contemplate this new year, new century, and new millennium. Make your resolution clear to simply be the man or woman of God that He has called us to be. Let’s let our light shine brightly through the simple truth of the fruit of the Spirit being seen.
As we do those two things, I believe that the rest of the world will at least see that we are living our lives differently and contently. Then, maybe we will be able to strike up that conversation that allows us to show them how they can Turn the Page.