I'm writing from 57th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan...and I'm people watching. Thousands of people hurrying...but after what?
New York Times columnist David Brooks writes that we have poorly prepared young people for real life. "This year's graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Yet upon graduation they will enter a world that is unprecedentedly wide open and unstructured. Worst of all, they are sent off into this world with the whole baby-boomer theology ringing in their ears...the litany of expressive individualism." Frank Sinatra sang if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. Not by navel gazing, David Brooks would say.
St. Peter agrees. He wrote to people who had sought happiness by satisfying their personal desires with like-minded peers. "You've had enough of that. Look outside yourself." "To this you have been called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps." (1 Peter 2:21). David Brooks: "Most people don't form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling."
People watching...and people are always watching us. Will they learn we're fulfilled outside ourselves, by our problems, by His call to service?
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