FLY

Today, I'm linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker‘s Five Minute Friday. The rules: Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking. 

 This week's prompt: Fly.

The first youth ministry I served was called FLY – an acronym that stands for Faith Lutheran Youth. Oddly, five years after leaving that congregation, I found myself serving at another whose youth ministry also shares this name, FLY.

For this reason, I no longer associate the word fly primarily with birds or planes or things that move through the sky. Instead, I think of

- Youth Ministries;

- The cursive FLY painted over the door to our Youth Room;

- Broken-hearted and moody teenagers;

- Red "noodies" with FLY written boldly on the front and 2 Corinthians 5:17 awkwardly displayed on the butt;

- The bold FLY canvas painted by one of my students during a Youth Room Makeover;

- Bibles thrown haphazardly around the youth room, pages askew from countless students racing one another to find the Scripture passage we're currently exploring;

- Teens who willingly try new things, even though they know doing so is risky and vulnerable, because they've found in FLY a community that is safe;

- Tears shed from laughing so hard your stomach hurts and from crying with someone who's experiencing the darkest days of their lives;

- Moments of frustration, so severe and so acute that I want to run from the Youth Room and never return;

- And moments of transformation - of students having powerfully encountered Christ - that leave me breathless, overwhelmed by the goodness of God and the privilege of being a youth worker.