What are the enemies of promise that keep us from becoming the persons God made us to be?

Rob Reiner's film Stand By Me tells the story of a group of four boys on their last journey of childhood. They are four very different kids from very different circumstances, and yet, they are still young enough that these differences don't matter very much.

But they sense their time is short. It is the summer before they will enter junior high - where our education system and adolescence work together to divide school-age children into "brains," "geeks," "hoods," "nerds," "popular," and "weirdos." In their last summer together as "just kids," the boys commit to one another as fast friends. It is a promise they cannot keep as childhood slips away.

When you walk into a room full of 4-year-olds, you …