A GENERATION WITHOUT WALLS

One Day in the Lives of America's Children

The following statistics are taken from The Almanac of the Christian World, pg. 779 edited by Edythe Draper, © 1990 by Edythe Draper

Every day in the United States: 2,795 teenage girls become pregnant. 1,106 teenage girls have abortions. 372 teenage girls have miscarriages. 689 babies are born to women who have had inadequate prenatal care. 67 babies die before one month of life. 105 babies die before their first birthday. 27 children die from poverty. 10 children die from gunshots with another 30 wounded by guns. 135,000 teenagers bring a gun to school. 6 teenagers commit suicide.

7,742 teenagers become sexually active. 623 teenagers contract syphilis or gonorrhea. 211 children are arrested for drug abuse. 437 children are arrested for drinking or drunken driving. 1,512 teenagers drop out of school. 1,849 children are abused or neglected. 3,288 children run away from home. 1,629 children are in adult jails. 2,556 children are born out of wedlock. 2,989 children see their parents divorced.

Proverbs 29:18 "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keeps the law, happy is he."

Life without purpose, not death, is the greatest tragedy of all.

You Are No Accident

If you’re reading this article and are not identified with the statistics above, that’s cause for celebration. If you are numbered among those sad facts, there is real hope for you — still. You are no accident. You are not a throw away item. Your life has worth and value. The Bible says in Ephesians 1:3-6 that you have an appointed destiny. You have a destiny to become a child of God. I mean, the very fact that you are here, reading this is proof you’re no accident. God has a real purpose for your life. He has a purpose for your being here. You are great value to God.

A City Without Walls

In ancient times, as settlements developed economically, they became ripe for plunder and raids. In those days, every man was a warrior and walls were needed to protect the citizens. Before the wall, every man was considered a warrior. Much of his time was consumed with being concerned on the enemy’s activity. His every movement could be his last, if he was careless about knowing where his enemy was and what he was planning.

After the wall was built, few enemies were ever seen. Walls keep out the enemy, but they keep the inhabitants in — inside the confines of their community. Generations pass — little of the enemy is ever seen. The walls begin to loose their significance. With the city dwellers now safely protected behind the walls, something unusual begins.

A man discovers that just beyond the safety of the walls, lays a lake in a valley. The lake is full of fish. At night, under the cover of darkness, he digs a hole through the wall to escape the security of the city, goes to the lake, and takes a huge haul of fish. Before dawn, he returns to the city unnoticed. His friends ask him, “Where did you catch all those fish?” Since the lakes inside the walls have lost all their fish, they persist in their questions, “Where did you catch all these fish?” The man reveals his discovery to his friends. One by one, men begin to do as their friend did — dig through the wall under darkness and return before dawn. Generations pass, and the fishing business flourishes. After years pass, the wall that offered safety to the city dwellers inside, now is reduced to only pillars standing instead.

Warrior status returns to the community and life becomes dangerous once again. The concerns of the people return to personal safety and security, and there is no time or energy left for pursuing purpose or calling, viz., fishing. City council decides to rebuild a new wall across the “fishing path”. The community is forced to make a choice. Do they protect themselves from the enemy outside for personal benefit at the risk of losing their vocation for the entire city and future generations?

America Without Walls

Samuel Adams, one of our own founding fathers, said this about America. “There is no external enemy as powerful as the inward dissolution of virtue and principle of any people.” In other words, America’s enemies are not those hordes from other nations with different languages and religions. They are not terrorists who lurk about caves in the Middle East, or those who highjack commercial aircraft.

America has lost her walls — The fortification of human spirit, which can only be nourished by passion from mental vision given by God. “Where there is no vision, the people perish”. To quote our father, Samuel Adams, he said it like this” . . .

a man is then free when he freely enjoys the security of the laws and rights to which he is born; when he is hindered by no violence from claiming those rights and enjoying that security, but may at any time demand the protection of the laws under which he lives... He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man”.

Information