Word: godly
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...teenagers left him wondering how deep the experiences were. "At 13," says Smith, "a lot of kids' mental and emotional lives are consumed by school, sports, media, maybe a boyfriend or girlfriend, so they don't have a lot of room for deeper thought." For many 13-year-olds, God is less an eternal truth than a friend helping them get through a really tough year...
...again someday, but he didn't feel certain enough. Then came the Grace Chapel winter retreat in New Hampshire. "I just went out into the snow," says Tristan. "I was cold, but suddenly I didn't care. It was like there's this barrier around you, just you and God, like you could bawl your eyes out and nobody would care." It was the moment that Tristan had been waiting for. He had met God, and his heart told him what his mind couldn't: that he would definitely see his grandfather again someday...
Tristan's personal encounter also gave him the confidence to challenge family members on some aspects of their faith. He thinks gay people were made that way by God, but his dad thinks it's a choice. Tristan believes that practicing his guitar glorifies God, while his parents wish he would do more homework. He's slowly making his own decisions about right and wrong. It's a skill that will keep him safe, he says, from the myriad temptations that will bedevil him between middle school and marriage...
...Tristan plays effortlessly through the chords and stops on a dime for an a cappella finale. A hundred kids in shorts and flip-flops shift their weight from side to side and sing, "Holy, holy, holy ..." Youth pastor Dietz smiles at his band. "Sounds good," he says. "I think God loves this." --With reporting by Adam Pitluk/Plano
...absurd thought that someone must be responsible for such an enormous injustice wouldn't go away. As I went about the city talking to survivors, I found myself repeatedly asking who they thought was to blame. Was there a reason to it all? Could God do such a thing to a people so proudly religious, who had already suffered so much? Most looked at me blankly; they were far too preoccupied with feeding their surviving family members and burying the dead to consider such existential musings. One or two even grew angry. Was I saying God had punished Aceh? Wasn...