Whenever I read history and encounter statistics on life expectancy rates here in the United States, I am surprised. If you go back to the year eighteen hundred, the average life expectancy was thirty-seven years. By nineteen hundred, that had increased to the age of forty-seven. And by the year two-thousand, life expectancy here in the U.S. had risen to seventy-seven. That’s certainly a testimony to things like better living conditions and improved healthcare. The number peaked at the age of seventy-nine just a handful of years ago, but it has been on the decline over the course of the last three years. Experts site deaths of despair as a contributing factor to this decline. This includes premature death due to drug overdoses, suicides, and health-related deaths caused by bad habits. We should ultimately be concerned for the spiritual health of our kids as they move through life, so that the hope of the Gospel does not lead them into despair. Instill the truths of Scripture in your kids.