This week's news 

Introduction

News this week carries the headline ‘Young cannot cope with daily life’ and suggests that alarming numbers of young people are unhappy and feel unable to cope with life today. The percentage rises dramatically for NEET (Not in Employment or Education) young people. The number of NEET young people nationally is also rising. All this made me wonder what the source of wisdom is...

 

Context

The Princes’ Trust, founded by Prince Charles in 1976, has recently published its fifth annual Youth Index which gauges young people’s wellbeing across a range of areas. The full report is peppered with statistics which illustrate how the recession has eroded young people’s confidence and ambitions and reveals an overall decline in young people’s wellbeing. In 2013 they expect to assist 55,000 young people at a cost of £50M. Media comments paint a depressing picture, yet on the Trust’s website there are stories of how they have worked with talented young people from deprived backgrounds to enable them to fulfil their potential.

 

Reflection

Where does wisdom come from? Is it through the conventional education system or through experience? Maybe those who are today’s statistics from The Princes’ Trust will be tomorrow’s wise people, or maybe they will never recover from the experience. Or maybe what is needed is the opportunity to develop the capacity to reflect on that very experience and learn from it.

As a young minister, I was involved in some negotiations with a neighbouring parish. Their vicar was approaching retirement. At the end of the negotiations I said to him ‘I wish I had your wisdom’. He replied ‘I wish I had your youthful enthusiasm’. Are the two mutually exclusive?

Perhaps we might draw inspiration from James 3.13-17.

 

Prayer

Pray for young people entering 2013 with no work or education.

Pray for the work of The Prince’s Trust and others working with young people.

 

Questions

• How might those who have struggled to thrive as young people accumulate wisdom?
  
• How might the experiences that The Princes’ Trust offer help build that wisdom in their clients?
  
• What might we learn from the work of the Prince’s Trust to help us to build a wise community? 

 

Action

• What do you know of Wisdom in the Bible? Where would you look for advice?
  
• When you have found some, make an offering of it in your worship with a prayer to grow in the wisdom of God.

 

Young People

• How do you react to the statistics in the report?
  
•  What do you need to become wise people?

 

 

Mark Beach is Dean of Rochester.

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