What Happened to the Rebelutionists?

It’s an ice cream and Ginger Ale night.

The problem with going to bed late one night is that the next day all you want to do is sleep…and then by the time bedtime actually rolls around, huh, you’re not tired. Thus begins a vicious cycle which I’m hoping to avoid, but not tonight.

While scrolling through Facebook I found a couple pre-blog articles I’d written about three years ago. One of them was about self-image stuff (surprise 🙂 ) and the other was about the transformation from a teenager to an adult and the onset of responsibilities. Most of you will remember the “Rebelution” movement a few years ago, with Alex and Brett Harris. It whisked through the Christian homeschool circles like a mad broom, sweeping us senseless with this “profound” wisdom from our peers. Or maybe it was because we all wanted the “Rebel with a Cause” t-shirt (mine was red) and all the cool paraphernalia that let us be a godly “rebel” because our parents approved of the Harris family from the early homeschool pioneering days. Who knows. Maybe none of us really wanted to “Do Hard Things”. Maybe it was just a huge trend, hopefully not.

But what happened to all the Rebelutionists? Some of us are married, some are starting their own families, some are still living with their families…what happened to that youthful energy compacted with the desire to know Christ more? I’m hoping that was the result, at least.

Or are we too old for the pursuit of holiness…or maybe the pursuit of holiness is “too old” for us? I’m thinking/writing this to myself as I ask the question. Maybe I’ve just been outside the church loop for a few years since getting married and moving, maybe I’m just the one who has gotten stale.

But it seems to me that at some point every person looks back on their younger days and wistfully remembers the “vitality of youth”. The fire, the spirit, the bold (and perhaps, stubborn)-headedness, the zeal. How do we capture that now, and make the most of it while we are still young? I’m not just meaning the Fountain of Youth just to stay young-looking and vigorous, but what advantage can we, as the younger generation of believers in Christ, claim during this phase of life? Single or married is irrelevant, what energy do we have now that we can expend? It’s not contingent upon a trend, it’s solely the status of our relationship with Christ…are we cultivating it, or letting it wilt?

It’s just something that has been on my mind tonight. Maybe it’s on yours, too.