Do you watch the news? Have you ever been away or out of your normal routine so that you had to get caught up when you returned? Did you find that you had missed very much, or not very much? When you do watch the news, how much of it is repetitive, shallow, superficial, sensational, and transitory? How much of it is directly applicable to your life, let alone deep and profound and permanently enduring? On this basis would you benefit by more exposure to the news, or less? If anything important happens you will find out. Would you benefit with fewer distractions and fleeting images?

Do you take the Bible literally? Does this work in every case? I told my followers that unless they ate the flesh and drank the blood of the Son of Man they would have no life in themselves. Later I told them that this was my body broken for you. Do you take these passages literally? If not, then are you able to affirm the reality and substance of symbolic language? If so, you can find greater depth there than in the literal meaning, which is normally the narrowest and least insightful approach?

Have you ever taken part in a rite of passage? There are milestones of passage such as getting a driver’s license, being able to drink and to vote, but these are more related to ages rather than rituals. Ancient cultures understood the importance of these transitions but they have been virtually abandoned in your consumer culture. Is this a gain or a loss? You have an educational system. Does it teach people what to value and guide them through the transitions of life to maturity? Have parents, and the culture as a whole, abdicated this responsibility?

A promise from back in the Old Testament is that I have a plan for you and that my thoughts toward you are full of peace and not evil, to give you a future and a hope. Do you find comfort in this? Do you know what your future is? It is an act of faith to believe this future exists even if you don’t know what it is. What conclusions can you draw from the trajectory of your life to date? Are you in control of the direction of your life? Have you already seen it unfold in directions that you didn’t anticipate, that were beneficial for you? I still have a future and a hope for you.