Five Minute Friday. The rules remain the same. Ponder the weekly prompt {disclosed at a Twitter Party on Thursday night}. Then write. Nothing too pithy, just honest as the words flow from the brain through the fingers. Keep it limited to five minutes {or so} with limited editing. Link  on Facebook at fiveminutefriday.com and sit back and enjoy other posts from other writers.

In fact, I’ve been using testimonials about the group and the exercise from other members as collected in Five Minute Friday: A Collection of Stories Written in Five Minutes Flat. This week’s it’s an anonymous post. I encourage you to listen to the words and visit Kate and her wonderful corps of writers … and maybe be inspired to join in!

“It all started with Lisa-Jo [Baker, the originator of Five Minute Friday] and when Kate was the new hostess, I wondered if my season for FMF was over. I stuck with it and I am so glad I did. I enjoy the Thursday night Twitter party and the challenge to say something in five minutes!”

I appreciate it as well. Have I ever told you that? This week’s prompt is ACTIVE. The timer is set so it’s time to GO…

Watch the children.

That’s the take from this week’s prompt. If you want to witness active in action, just watch the toddlers and young children. They typically are active from sunrise to sunrise … and sometimes longer.

Ever the older tweeners and teens exercise their minds and expand their imagination. That’s action as well.

Unfortuntely, as we get older, our energy tends to sap. We simply cannot keep up — and that’s coming from a septuagenarian. I have plenty of energy for my age, but I’ll be the first to tell you I can’t keep up with the constant activity of the next generation.

My experiences this month with the grandkids, five to 16, have reminded me of our faith walk as well. We start out with an abundance of energy and become active as we seek each morsel of our ever-expanding faith. As toddlers and young children of God we excitedly seek God’s presence in our lives. As teens we start questioning some of our beliefs {not a bad thing} … STOP

… asking more and more questions as we grow in our faith {Unfortunately for some, lose their faith too}. And then we get older and older. Our energy and attention span wanes and we’re often all too willing to hand off matters of faith to the newbies.

The problem with that is faith is active, not passive. You never know too much. You never can sit on the sidelines. You have to be active in your faith  if you don’t want spiritual atrophy to set in.

The days of keeping up with the toddlers may be over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t participate in their lives, guide them, play with them. And then it’s time for a nap.

The same is true with out faith lives. The enthusiasm of those first days as a Christian may slow down, but we can and should still stay active by reading, exploring, learning more about what we believe. And we have another advantage, we can be a generational buffer to bridge our wisdom and experience with the newbie fire and enthusiasm — not to temper it, but to smooth out the highs and lows.

Be active. Stay active — in life and in faith.

THOUGHT TO REMEMBER: We do not know where all our opportunities will come from. Sometimes they come from exactly the place we had hoped for and at other times they come from an unexpected source.