Whenever I can’t figure out how to use the latest technology, I find a twelve-year-old to tell me what to do. Yes, the world is a bit upside down. Children are teaching adults how to survive in the age of technology. It can cause us to believe that we have nothing to teach our grandchildren.
Maybe you don’t know how to play a video game and your smartphone makes you look stupid. Yes, your teenage granddaughter can film a video, edit it and post it on YouTube. She may soon be able to command a robot to make her bed. She understands technology, even if she can’t yet spell the word. But she doesn’t understand life. Not like you do. You know what love and encouragement can mean to someone. You have patience and the ability to pay attention, virtues that are necessary for success in an age where people look for distractions to distract them from their distractions. You know why one shouldn’t lie and why you should make your bed. You have survived a lot while she hasn’t even survived her teens!
There is a big difference between knowledge and wisdom. You have abundantly more wisdom than your grandchildren, even if you lack some technological know-how. You understand the deeper, more meaningful things of life: love, wisdom, courage, patience, long suffering, laughing, and crying. You are no longer a silly puppy chasing its tail.
Youth chase the new, the exciting, the eye-catching, and the famous. We did the same when we were puppies. But you can offer what the hottest singer and the coolest actor cannot; proven, tested, lasting, right, and true values. Wisdom still works when new and exciting fail.
Wisdom can be defined as the ability to discern what is most important, why it is important, and what it demands in response. Puppies don’t have that.
For Discussion: Why do you make your bed? What’s wrong with lying?
For Action: Read up on the definition of wisdom, knowledge, understanding, judgment and discernment. Eliminate the inane or weak definitions and make a good judgement on the differences between these words.
Copyright © 2021 Grandly: The Strategic Grandparents Club
About Grandly: The Strategic Grandparents Club
Grandly: The Strategic Grandparents Club is a program of the Sword of the Spirit. This program was founded in 2016 by Mike Shaughnessy as a resource to equip grandparents to share their faith with their grandchildren. Grandly teaches grandparents to “Think, Pray, and Act Strategically” in the lives of their grandkids. It recognizes that grandparents occupy a special role in the lives of their grandchildren, and if properly trained, can make an outsized impact on their spiritual lives.
As a youth minister, Mike knew the difference grandparents could make in the lives of their grandchildren. He wondered if it could happen more often. It wasn’t that they lacked the faith. What they lacked was a strategy. If grandparents learned how to think, pray, and act strategically, the way youth workers did, something marvelous would happen. It has. Strategic grandparents have become missionaries to their own grandchildren.
We equip grandparents to be “youth workers” to their own grandchildren. When we ask grandparents, “What is your biggest concern?” Most answer “our grandchildren,” not their retirement or the next vacation. Many see that their grandchildren are not getting the spiritual and moral formation they need, and feel equally unable to address that need. We currently equip grandparents to be youth workers through two venues: our website (grandly.org) and our “Do It Grandly” Seminars.
Our website reaches a network of grandparents who are interested in learning how to think, pray, and act strategically. We publish bi-weekly online articles that provide encouragement, motivation, and practical tools on how to pass on their faith to grandchildren. Through our “Do It Grandly” seminars, we help grandparents to grow in their relational skills while providing insight into contemporary youth culture, giving them valuable tools for building impactful, Christ-centered relationships with their grandchildren. These seminars provide a way for Sword of the Spirit grandparents to re-enter internal (their own grandchildren) and external (their own peers) mission
For access to inspirational articles, sign up for a free membership at www.grandly.org.
Interested in hosting a seminar in your local community or learning more? Please email Pili Galvan Abouchaar at grandlydirector@gmail.com.
Top image credit: Young teenager helping Dad with digital device, from Bigstock.com, Copyright: deagreez Stock Photo ID: 330456748
Mike Shaughnessy is a lifelong member of the Servants of the Word, an international ecumenical brotherhood of men living single for the Lord. He is a prolific writer. He has written extensively about youth work and currently leads Grandly, a ministry helping grandparents pass on their faith to their grandchildren. He lives in Lansing, Michigan USA.
Mike,
What a blessing to see an article posted by you. The Wisdom of this short article is great.