So what are you waiting for?

Disclosure: What I'm writing about is in no way meant to judge, condemn or make anyone feel guilty. It's simply a plea to all of us, myself included, to look around and do something about we have so easily ignored, to stop waiting for this imaginary green light and just go.

Turn on one of the many news channels and you'll likely hear plenty of stories about terrorism, wars, sex scandals, murders, reports of a bad economy and so on.... What I'm betting you wont' hear about is the teenager that died of an overdose, or the one, that at the age of 14, is struggling with addiction. You probably won't hear about the teen girl struggling with a severe eating disorder, or the one mutilating their body to numb the pain. I could keep going on about the issues that today's teens are struggling with, but I'm pretty sure whether you admit it or not, you are very aware of the issues these kids face.

If these things that are happening all around you, don't disturb you, I challenge you to open your eyes, and your heart.

How easy it is to blame our school systems, or "bad parents", or media for the state of our youth. How easy it is to point fingers, and place blame and shake our heads, asking what are they going to do to fix this.

I have a better question... What are YOU going to do? What am I going to do? This isn't a question of who, just look around and you'll see, it's not a question of why, because that's so obvious, and it's not a question of when, because the answer is now.

I don't know the answer to that question for you, I can only answer it for me. What I do know is that we have to stop waiting around for the green light, we have to stop waiting for the answer. If you're waiting for God to show you or tell you, then you can stop, He already has!

1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

John 15:17 These things I command you, that you love one another

1 John 3:16-19 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possession and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in His presence.

Love is Gods greatest command, and it requires more than words. It requires action, you can't truly love like Christ loved without doing something. He's asked us to love, that's the answer, love.

Here's the thing... These teenagers are dying, they may be your children, your neighbors, your friends children, the kids at your church... They may not be any of those, maybe their the kid that bags your groceries, the kid that takes your order at your favorite restaurant, the kid sitting behind your local theatre every night with nowhere else to go. They are dying, we are losing them... because we aren't loving them.

There isn't time to sit and wait, there isn't time to wonder what went wrong, to place blame, or to question who will fix it. How many have I passed by because I was just too busy, or because I didn't know what to do? How many opportunities to love have I missed?

What are you waiting for? What am I waiting for?

My challenge for all of us is simple...It's to simply love.