[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaLuEdxTqIw[/youtube]He did it. Jordan Romero did it. He climbed Mt. Everest! What’s so significant about Jordan Romero climbing a mountain that many others have already conquered? Jordan Romero is only 13. No, it’s not a typo on my part. He is 13 years old, the youngest person ever to climb to the highest point on the earth.

It was not without controversy, though. Romero’s desire to tackle Everest his first year into his teens launched no small stir in the climbing community. In fact, as this Outside Magazine article reveals, the controversy wasn’t necessarily confined to the climbing community.

People die every year in May as they make ascents into the thin air that hovers at Himalayan peaks like Everest. There was great concern about the outcry that might ensue should something have happened to Romero as he tried. That is completely understandable. Mountain climbing is dangerous any way you look at it. Climbers, whether they are climbing Mount Hood or Mount Everest, are taking a risk. But when there’s 1/3 the oxygen than there is at sea level at the peak, and people’s lives are in jeopardy even though they climb with supplemental oxygen, the dangers are magnified.

But Romero did it. He’s now climbed two (Kilimanjaro & Everest) of the seven summits on his bid of tackling them all. Any way you look at it, it’s impressive beyond belief.

This leads me to the point of this post. I think it might be time that we quit taking for granted this generation that so many look at with skepticism. There are those like Romero who are doing the unthinkable, and that is a good thing.

The tendency is to want to write off the younger generations because TV, video games, and soft parents are creating a worthless generation. But this isn’t necessarily so. Stories like that of Jordan Romero, as well as countless other stories of today’s youth that haven’t made national headlines, are sending ripples into the waters that are our gross over-generalizations of others. I suppose Paul point still rings true: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12, ESV).