An Hour of Learning

“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father glorify your name.’” -John 12: 27 - 28a

We are in that hour.
As a staff we have been attacked, we are being attacked. Fatigue is the monster of the hour. It lurked in our weekends, and sucked at our return. It has stolen our energy and made off with our strength. Its the horror of the beast that makes it worst. We grab every moment of rest, of sleep and are met with more yawning, more falling eyes, more tired muscles, screaming at us to just let them rest, let them collapse where they are, whether that be grass, gravel, or pavement, in the sun or the shade, to just be still.

What do we say? Do we ask God to restore us to our strength? 

How freaking lame.

Our strength is waning or even depleted. We can ask for it back or...

Stop thinking about our issues. Because for this purpose we have come to this hour.  We are fast approaching the point when we can take no credit for anything because we have no more ability to do anything. I love this point! The fantastic knowledge that anything good is God working through us. God working in us! Think about that. 

Herein lies the faith within the summer. 

On our dedication night we talked about God’s call to be here this summer being enough, point blank. He brought us all here with a purpose and when we get caught up in all our weariness or irritation we are actually mocking God’s purpose, so forget it all.

Take my strength God, I don't want it hindering yours. Take my life, my energy, my pride and leave only You. You are the best work. The best gift. The best thing. 

Every morning get up and acknowledge your issues, then make a decision every moment for the rest of the day to forget them, lay them aside. We are eternal souls in temporary shells. The shell does not control us, we owe it nothing. We are concerned solely with God and He has set us up perfectly to blow the socks off of this summer for Him. 

Anyone can see our failure. We can spot it in ourselves and in others so instead of dwelling on it, shift focus. The more attention we give a problem, the more power we give it, an undue power, because we serve and live in the power of God, and nothing is bigger or better or stronger than Him.

So... shift focus. How?

When we think about tired we are, focus on the fact you can walk, or that you are not deathly ill. Or, better yet, imagine that the person next to you feels even worse, whether they look it or not (some people are fantastic actors) and find a way to encourage them.

When we think about how little time we have in the grand scheme of these campers lives and decide to settle for giving them just a fun time, break the session down to minutes (about 8,000 on a one week session and 18,000 in a two week). Now think of significant, life altering moments you’ve had in our life and those you could fit into that time frame. I've had conversations or read a notes that took five minutes or less and it changed things. 

Finally, just assume (safely) that you are blessed. Assume that even the tough stuff is a magnificent alternative to something that God’s grace is saving us from. We serve a God of unending Grace. Let’s not get high on ourselves and forget how great God is, beyond even a fragment of comprehension. His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts. How untrusting to think that He does not have a perfect plan in our success as well as our struggles. I was reminded the other day that we are "being made into glory". Its a hard fought process. 

Finally, pray. Pray and talk to God when we want to rant or complain to ourselves. Pray in your walk between classes. Pray with your kids at rest hour. Pray and thank God. The best way to abide in Grace is to live in gratitude. We do have so much (so much, so much, so much) to be thankful for. 

Read This Too! He speaks better than I could hope to. 

On the In

Mystery. 

Traditionally the word is used to describe something that no one can figure out. In the ancient Greek a mystery was some sort of rite that only initiates were admitted to. Exclusive.

I have been reading in Colossians and found that within six or seven verses at the end of chapter one and into chapter two the word “mystery” is used twice. The note on the word in my bible says, 

“Paul changes the meaning ( from it’s exclusive connotation) radically by always combining it with words such as “manifested”(Col 1:26), “made known”(Eph 1:9), “Bring to light” (Eph 3:9) and “revelation” (Rom 16:25). The Christian mystery is not secret knowledge for a few. It is a revelation of divine truths– once hidden but now openly proclaimed. 

Ephesians 1:9-12 is one that I particularly appreciate right now: 

“He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is , the heaven and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained a inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.”

For those of you just tuning in, I recently graduated college and I am currently working at a job that ends in August (camp). After that my life is a blank slate. Well, let’s say, “my life is unknown”. 

The idea of a biblical mystery is a word phrasing that is not new to me. I grew up as the daughter of a theologian, so not a lot sounds unfamiliar. However, what is always new is when I will suddenly understand or connect wording, or concepts that I have heard my entire life and just passed over. 

I always considered “the mystery” of God to be that He was God and we will never understand Him. Isaiah 55:8-9 stuff, “His thoughts are not our thoughts” and all that. Not that this is not true, but upon closer inspection it appears that Paul’s use of the word is nearly sarcastic, because it is always used to describe the revelation or destruction of a mystery. 

In the past (pre-Jesus), a life with God was more exclusive, reserved for a particular people and communicated in a particular way. Jesus came and won victory for all people, not just the Jews, and opened the door to God. More so the Holy Spirit came and lived in us. God in us. So if we take the time to pay attention and listen then we can know the will of God in our lives. 

Please go back and re-read that paragraph (ignoring what is sure the errors you are almost certain to see). 

God’s “mystery” is out of the bag, but I keep wanting to live like He’s keeping it from me. 

I have previously liked the word “mystery” because it gave God power. Something that He holds over our heads to help maintain His God-ness. But that’s not God’s mystery. The part of God we don’t get is the part that is way too much for our heads to handle. If we knew all about God and every aspect of Him, our brains would explode. The part about God we don’t understand is not a mystery, its a faith-growing, brain saving Grace. The mystery of God is gone. 

So in my life I have no plan. I have a Bachelors degree, five grand worth of school debt, no car, and a terminal job. I feel like a pretty typical college graduate. But why be typical?

I do not have much power over the list above. That is my situation currently, it will not magically go away. I will remain typical on paper. But I am not bound to think “typically”. I am not bound by the pressures of my culture, my world. I do not have to think that way because I am in on the “mystery”. The “mystery” being, there are no more mysteries. Jesus blew them away.

Psalm 139 is a chapter that i have referenced countless times on this blog, specifically verse sixteen:

“Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there were not one of them.”

God wrote my story, where I’ll go, what I’ll do, who I’ll be with. And if a God who created the billions of tiny details that has kept our very existence in functioning balance for thousands of years, took the time to write me a story, why should I worry about it if I don’t know the next step? Why should I worry about paying bills, or having a job, or where I’ll live? It’s not a mystery that I need to solve, its a story, a life, that I need to live, day by day. 

So once again, I end on essentially the same note, because it is one that I will probably spend the rest of my life learning: the god of the age is not my God, and the struggle of the quintessential college graduate is not my struggle. I am not sitting on a bench anxiously reading a Sherlock Holmes story, I am Sherlock Holmes, calmly waiting within the pages for Arthur Conan Doyle to tell me where to go next.

So I sit on the concrete porch of the lodge at camp watching the flags blow in the gentle morning breeze and enjoying the way the same breeze has raised the goose bumps on arms, chilled the end of my nose, made my chest contract and my shoulders roll in. The rarity of feeling cold in the Georgia summertime. 

In the next thirty minutes this porch will be filled with over seventy precious lives singing crazy songs and getting excited to embrace their coming day, whatever it holds because they trust in camp to give them a fantastic time. 

Faith like a child.

I am surrounded by children every day, so I should have a basic idea of what it looks like.

Children have very little big picture perspective. They are worried about the present moment.  “I’m tired”, “I hurt”, “I’m hungry” etc. As adults we get frustrated with that because in our minds, if you are tired, you are tired, drink some coffee and get to bed earlier. If you hurt, “walk it off”, if you are hungry, “lunch is in twenty minutes”. But these kids get up in faith that their day at camp will be amazing, they live where they are in the moment. 

If we get past the whining and the selfish nature, we can learn. Faith like a child isn’t just the example of a blind trust that their daddy will catch them when they jump off the side of the pool or that no matter what, mommy will come back and get them from school. Its a faith that the exact moment they are in has the potential to be the most important of their life. 

Another unplanned lesson from camp. 

Fragments of Life

First step check-in on Day one.

I was going to write about a day in the life, but there is so much that happens between 6:35AM and 12:35AM, which is about my daily hours,  I will pull out some of my favorite moments from June 5.

I came into the gym with Trip, a program director, to lead stretches for Team Sports class so the teachers could meet up and get on the same page. We just went to town with the ridiculous stuff till Stealth (a Team Sports teacher) came and took over.  We jumped up and down and did the sprinkler with as much energy as I could muster, but they were a tough crowd. For some reason they seemed more interested in playing basketball than doing group yoga moves.

I went to sit on the basketball goal and sat.

While I sat, I looked out over the team sports and tumbling classes and felt the beater that sits on my diaphragm begin to spin. The beater that starts spinning and and pushes all my emotions up through my heart and through my chest into my throat and sometimes all the way to my eyes, where it comes out as water.

Rookie and I playing a game. Working on our ridiculous status.

I sat watching thirty-nine campers who were laughing and learning and getting so excited. More so, 6 college students, investing their time, their heart and energy into their lives. People have such a low standard for college students and it is often deserved, but this summer I have the privilege of working, knowing, and loving a whole mess of students who think bigger. Whether or not they came here for that purpose they have it now, because they have been given that standard and everyone one of them is fighting, and succeeding, to meet it.

Later in the afternoon I went to our 'golf' class. It has brightly colored plastic putters that they use to the equivalent of a small tennis balls. This session the class is made up of five small boys and the two male teachers. Both of these guys were placed in older cabins because they did not feel as confident working with younger boys, but they own it. They continually set them up to succeed and encouraged them to keep trying and had so much fun.

Sidebar: As I sat watching, as fun as it was, my eyelids fell down over my eyes and the next thing I knew, Spirit (a teacher) had the boys yelling, "Wake up Hugs!" (Again days go 6:35-12:35AM). Whoops.

I got to help lead assemblies full of songs about Beavers, Little Green Frogs, Cabins in the Woods, Baby Sharks and competitive praising of the Lord.

After dinner we went up to Field Two to play a game and it came out that a large amount of the campers had jumped on board with the idea that I look like Katy Perry. To the point that kids were asking if I was Katy Perry. This got Trip and I talking about ridiculous pop stars as we cleaned up, post-game. I brought up Ke$ha, GaGa, Nikki Minaj, and mentioned how a lot of people get paid for simply being ridiculous.  Trip commented that we should get in on that.

Pretty sure we're there. We get significantly less money, but if those of you who know a staff member of Strong Rock, there's a chance you wouldn't recognize these normally self-respecting college students when they are in the midst of summer. Ridiculous is what we do.

I am so blessed and proud to be a part of this camp and this group of people.

I will end this evening by locking up the lodge and turning out the lights and walking down to my cabin. The moon will be shining insanely bright over my head, highlighting the passing clouds with silver. In the woods a whippoorwill will be singing and down by the lake there will be a ensemble of bullfrogs and crickets lulling me to sleep.

This is a fraction of a fantastic day at a fantastic camp with a fantastic group of people under the servitude of a fantastic God.