Cafeteria Style Acceptance

One of the most nerve-wracking and anxiety-inducing places is for sure, the Jr. High School cafeteria. Most of us remember what it was like in the school lunchroom. After you get your lunch you scan the room for a table where you will feel welcome and accepted.  Often the same table where your friends wave to you.  But when your besties aren't there, it becomes a room full of uncertainty.  When sitting alone somehow feels better than not fitting in.  Fitting in is a fear of not being accepted. 

Springtide Research Institute recently compiled a report about Gen Alpha and their faith:  Thirteen, A First Look at Gen Alpha.  What do 8th graders, 13-year-olds, Gen Alpha, know about the differences between fitting in and belonging?  Here are some answers from our youth at RBCC: 

• Belonging is about being somewhere you want to be, and they want you. 
• Fitting in is about being somewhere you want to be, and no one cares. 
• Belonging is being accepted for you. 
• Fitting in is being accepted for trying to be like everyone else. 
• If I get to be me, then I belong. 
• If I get to be like you, then I am only fitting in. 

Not belonging at school is heartbreakingly hard, but it is nothing compared to not feeling you belong in the place you call home.   To feel you don't belong in your own family.  What 8th graders say not belonging at home feels like: 

• Not living up to parents expectations for my life. 
• Not being as cool, or as popular, or as athletic or as smart as your parents want you to be. 
• Not being as good at the same things your parents were good at when they were young. 
• No being accepted for your true self and expression of self. 

The familiar story of the Prodigal Son, is a story of a family, and all is complications of acceptance and belonging.  I can imagine the prodigal son story taking place in a Jr. High school cafeteria.   To be willing to look up from our lunches and notice everyone entering the room.  Learning to recognize and understand differences, then accepting those differences, and then celebrating belonging together. 

Would you have been the one or are you going to be the one…to scooch over at the lunch table
(or regularly claimed and familiar church pew) for the stranger in the doorway, the outcast in the room, the unpopular one in the room, the one who has the unpopular opinions, the one you perceive as annoying or to blame?  Because based on the stories Jesus tells, he treats all those people like family!  All worthy of acceptance and celebration. 

 “His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’”   Luke 15:32

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