I think one of the most raging and ravaging epidemics of our time is the traumatizing disconnect between generations- the turning away of the hearts of the fathers from the children. We’ve become so busy with life- too busy to love, too busy to care and too busy to really let another generation live. In the multitude of our activity, we shut out a promise of tomorrow.

The most disturbing effect of the increasingly apparent generational disconnect is not the estimated thirty million kids who live on and roam the African streets; it’s not the American night clubs filled with gang violence and substance abuse, nor is it the prosperity of prostitution in some fast-paced European city.

I think it’s simply the loss of human potential. I see them every day. Some live in great houses, but have never known a home. Some are well educated, but have not been discovered. Some are active and boisterous, but retreat every night into caves of depression and emptiness.

I believe every life retains a God-ordained and God-given right to be lived to its full potential.

It has become a sadly lucrative ambition for many a Nigerian street teenage school dropout to own an okada. They ignore the huge risks associated with riding an okada, the unimaginable distances and the unhealthy exposures to the wind and weather conditions in order to rake in some money. At least they get to eat meals and pay off a few bills. But that in itself is the deception.

But I think the okada tells a much deeper story. If you had ever been to Lagos, Nigeria- when Lagos was Lagos: In the days when, rather than ‘Nigerian commercial capital’, a better description for the word ‘Lagos’ would be ‘a state of commotion, confusion and the pursuit of vanity’. You’d see several of those young ‘okada boys’ wriggling their way through the frustrated hooting cars in the traffic jam, with a scientific accuracy that avoids any scratch on the cars, and then they turbo off at an alarming speed as they hit the clear highway. It’s much faster than waiting in a car and it’s seemingly exciting. It bypasses all the jams and as it hits top speed, it swerves with a majestic glide to avoid the potholes. But it’s so unguarded and exposed directly to the boisterous winds.

If you start giving yourselves to the down-and-out …You shall build the old ruins; you shall rear the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called, The repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to live in. Isaiah 58:10 MSG, 58:12 LITV

You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again Isaiah 58:12 MSG

I believe every life retains a God-ordained and God-given right to be lived to its full potential.

By the Grace of God, you can restore that right! If you’ll give yourself to some ‘down-and-out’ person, you can stand with God to make out a future in a life that would have no semblance to its past. Iniquity has abounded- it has broken homes, broken hearts, abused and traumatized many, and left precious seeds abandoned on the streets. But in the abounding of iniquity is God’s promise of Grace super-abounding!

But where sin abounded, grace super-abounded. Rom 5:20 ALT

We are endued with Great Grace to rescue, to heal, to restore and to empower.

I write these lines to perhaps merely stir a consciousness in you; but probably, to go further and challenge some action in you.