Last Sunday morning, I had the good fortune to talk with a couple of young women at Marble who are in their late teens. They graduated from high school in the last year or two and most are enrolled in college here in the city. Some have been coming to Marble for many years and have been an active part of the church school. They are women who have entered a new phase in life--and they are struggling to make sense of the change and to see where they fit in the life of the church.

I invited them to try out Connection on Sundays and guess what they said? "You're too old."

I felt like I got knifed. Too old?  Me?  I'm 33 for crying out loud!

But I realized later on that night that when I was 18 or 19, I did not feel comfortable with 30 year-olds either. They were too old. They had wrinkles and lines on their faces that bespoke a level of worry that made me nervous—and they walked as though they weight of the world were on their shoulders. At 19, life is full of newness and freshness and boldness. The world, through the eyes of the young, looks like a big ball of possibility and promise.

Many of us in Connection are wrinkly folks in our 30s and we have traced out some of those same possibilities and promises to the end. We are, truthfully, facing a somewhat different set of life issues than a 19 year-old.

Yet much of life remains the same as it was then: the search for meaning and purpose, finding work that makes us happy and has an impact, discovering ourselves by experimenting with loving and trusting intimate relationships.

I believe that different generations have a lot to teach one another. Some of us "old folk" need to be reminded that God's world never loses its possibility and promise. The "young folk" need models of maturity and they need to see what a deeper faith looks like and sounds like. We need each other to care for and teach each other.