“Generation Y’s goal? Wealth and fame.” That headline last month in USA Today caught my eye. “Ask young people about their generation’s top life goals and the answer is clear and resounding: They want to be rich and famous” (1-10-07). And then came Newsweek magazine’s cover story last week: “The Girls Gone Wild Effect: Out-of-Control Celebs and Online Sleeze Fuel a New Debate Over Kids and Values” (2-12-07). Turns out our “tweens” are going gaga over the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, whose morality (or the lack thereof) has shamed even the national media.

Will there be a Super Bowl in heaven? Maybe. But it certainly won’t be sponsored by Doritos and Pepsi and Monster.com with their $2.6 million per thirty second TV ads! And it won’t be a showdown between the beasts of the wild (as in bears and colts). In fact, it won’t be a showdown at all, since heaven doesn’t live by the winner-take-all philosophy of our earthy sports. Which means God never sits at the fifty-yard line, cheering a team on to win, knowing that by those cheers he de facto is hoping the other team will lose. None of the above!

Here’s the headline of the week: “And the crowd listened to her/him with great interest.” Because that line from the gospel story (see Mark 12:37 NLT) is the perfect descriptor of this campus’ response to our young preachers all week long. The Andrews student week of prayer this week has driven home for me the power of peer to peer communication and testimony.