We just wrapped up Junior A camp yesterday. For the week of Staff Training Scruffy, Choco, and Sparks worked to prepare this year’s counselors and support staff for a summer of service. Last week all that head-knowledge was put to the test. A starlight hike to Inspiration Point, horseback rides down the dusty summer road, splashing in the sun at Lake Chelan, and dashing through the meadow with a milk jug full of water during the big water fight. There is a lot of fun to be had at camp. But all of this requires a good deal of energy, patience, and self-sacrifice. It means making sure the kids have sunscreen on lake day, close toed shoes on horse day, and a buddy close by during night games so they don’t get freaked out by the darkening woods. It means getting down in the sand to make a sculpture of a giant frog during the sand castle competition when you were up late the night before mopping the kitchen. It means sneaking a camper’s sleeping bag to the laundry room so no one knows he had an accident. It means sharing your candy to bribe the cabin inspector and standing by a child’s bunk holding her hand until she falls asleep. It means reading stories at bedtime instead of collapsing into your bunk and running for the puke bucket when your camper gets a surprise case of the flu. A difficult and beautiful task, but the week went well. Two little boys chose to become followers of Christ, a counselor and one camper asked to be baptized in the horse trough down in the meadow, and a passel of kids were shown a week of love in Jesus name. As the mom of a ten-year-old camper this week, I want to thank the counselors. I saw you welcome my boy and the children around him into your hearts. I saw you love and give and laugh and cry. I am thankful for you and I am proud of you. My little guy came home exhausted but exultant. He had a wonderful week, and I was shocked and amazed to discover that he actually remembered the main point of the chapel sessions as well. Our worth is not dependent upon our actions. God loves us and wants us as His own…just because.

Boo Boo

My husband, Scruffy, was scheduled to speak about camp at a little church on the West side of Washington, but everything went wrong. First, the generator that powers the camp broke down. Second, the backup generator that we rented at the last minute at an increased price broke down. Third, some electrical thing-a-ma-bob on the pump for the well broke down. This left Choco no choice but to drive forty minutes to Wal-Mart for jugs of water so the rental group could cook and flush toilets.

As we bid Choco goodbye and rushed over the mountains, Scruffy and I couldn’t help but think: “What in the world are we doing here?” At church that Sunday the pastor spoke from many passages, including Mark 8:34. Scruff and I had been stewing over the upcoming Staff Training session on The Gospel. One of the most important elements of Staff Training is to teach our summer staff how to share the gospel with children in a simple way that is true to scripture. Scruff and I both started scribbling notes, looked up at each other and mouthed, “Staff Training”, then continued to scribble.

Why were we there at that cute little church eating pastries, drinking coffee, and talking to folks when Choco was wrestling with the generator and the well pump and they really needed us back at camp? Perhaps there are reasons that I will never guess, but here is one of them.

Mark 8:34—“Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Deny self, take up cross, follow Christ.

It doesn’t get more simple then that folks. And I don’t think you will make things any clearer or more true by adding words. This is the essence of the Christian walk. The Gospel is the good news that Jesus came, He lived, He loved, He died, He rose, He is coming, and He has called us to follow Him. How does one respond to the Gospel and become a follower? Jesus told us Himself.

Deny self, take up cross, follow me.

At that moment Scruff and I knew that we were supposed to be there. God had things to say. We had been stewing and praying and wondering over the Staff Training sessions. But God had answers, at a little church on the Westside, on the weekend that everything broke down.

Last week Scruffy pointed out an interesting article about outdoor play. It is written by secular scientists who are researching the connection between outdoor play, spirituality, and environmental appreciation. Now the Michigan State University Investigators have barely taken a glimpse at this fascinating concept. But I think they have tapped into an age old truth that further research will only confirm.

Romans 1:20–“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

It is 7:31am and I am in my favorite puffy chair at the Staff house writing. If I glance out the window up toward the cabins, I see the mottled morning shadows in the undergrowth that creeps across the hillside and shaggy strips of lichen draping the puzzle piece bark of Ponderosa Pines. I hear birdsong from nearby branches and shoo away a squirrel that tries to break into our home through a gap by the air-conditioner. There is something of God in these simple and powerful sights. Something that tugs at the soul.

A lung-full of crisp morning air and the brush of bright leaves across your skin, the crunch of pine needles under your feet as you run and the wind drying the sweat in your hair when you top the ridge after a long hike. The grumbling strength of a bear and the fluid grace of a deer bounding across the meadow. These things speak of God.

A child, hiking and dancing, running and falling and frolicking and imagining. A child out in God’s creation begins to understand all these things. Just as anyone who is near God is amazed and apprehensive, awed and comforted. Nature has that effect upon us, because it is His. Is it any wonder that a child would understand that we must cherish the splendid world that speaks to us of God? That we must not trample upon the works of His hands.

An ancient truth. But no less vital for this generation of children.

So as these secular scientists suggest, we must get out little ones outdoors. Let them feel a caterpillar rolling across their skin. Allow them the warmth of sunlight on their closed eyelids. Walk them past the fierce chittering squirrel and the bounding hare, the massive bull elk blowing frosty clouds of breath on an October morning and the silent cougar that is but a flash before it is gone. These things speak of God and so many people are missing them. 

This is something that a week at summer camp can offer to the children entrusted to us. We sing about God and learn about God from the camp speaker, but sometimes the walk up to the cabin and that fleeting glimpse of a doe and her fawn is even more profound. God is here, in the Glory of His creation and we shall become a sorry people indeed, if we miss Him as He walks among us.

Boo Boo

http://psychcentral.com/news/2014/05/02/outdoor-play-can-enhance-kids-spirituality/69283.html

For the first time in years, I had the opportunity to participate in the Camas Meadows Annual Ladies Retreat. During one of the sessions I was able to attend (I have 3 boys at home and so my attendance tends to be sporadic at best) the speaker was reading from I Samuel and the story of Hannah. We remember Hannah for her sacrifice and devotion and faith. But I was struck by the words used to describe her tale.

Wept

Would not Eat

Bitterness of Soul

Wept Much and Prayed

Look upon your servant’s Misery

Remember Me

Deeply Troubled

Pouring out my Soul

My Great Anguish and Grief

So many times all we remember is the triumphal climax of this story. Hannah has a baby boy and she gives him to God. But Hannah experienced her Dark Night of the Soul as well. Many many dark nights in fact.

We had to say goodbye to our dear doggy Shamu this week. He has been beloved by our family and campers alike, for almost 12 years. And when you are in that moment of grief, weeping in the darkness, lost in the sadness and pain. It is hard to look at all the greats in the Bible and remember that they didn’t know how their stories would end.

They walked through darkness as well, but they trusted that God walked with them. Because that is what He has vowed to us. Not that our path will only contain butterflies and flowers, but that He is there, among us, in our ecstasy and in our grief. That He is God, whatever this world contains. That He is Lord, whatever pits and heights our tale must traverse. That He is love and the we are His. These are the things to which we can cling. These, these are truth.

 John 16:33–“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Boo Boo

The Deadline for Summer Staff applications came this week.

Scruff and I will be reading applications and praying and interviewing kids and praying that more people will suddenly decide to send in an application at the last minute. Getting enough counselors can be difficult. But the Lord always provides. And I was thinking about what exactly a summer serving at camp offers you. How can I lure you to come and serve with us, especially when other places can afford to actually pay you? How can I correctly portray the impact that a week of fun and sun and Bible sessions and night games has on the children you give your summer to?

I can’t.

What can we offer you here at Camas Meadows? After a week of serving kids with us you will be completely and totally spent.

At camp you will thoroughly spend yourselves. Spend yourself until you think that there isn’t a single drop of energy left in your body to give, and when you reach that point, then you will give more. You will not get enough sleep. You will not have the alone time that you think you need to recharge. You will have to get up way too early to have that precious moment in the Word with your Lord. You will think about skipping that time, but you will need it. Because God is all that will keep you going. At first the sheer energy and joy and utter rowdiness will push you along in a joy-filled wave of activity. But then you will run out. Then you will see what is left when your energy and drive and sleep has all evaporated. Who are you, beneath everything else? You will not be enough. And that is alright, because He walks among us, hoping for these moments when we are truly spent.

It is that moment when you do the motions to the crazy songs and then wrap your arms around your campers shoulders for the slow songs and then hide behind a bush and weep for 5 minutes crying out to God because they will be going home in 2 days and you know what kind of home that is. Then when even your tears are spent, you pray and you wipe your face and you run down to the meadow to play capture the flag and crawl through nettles and step on a bees nest and hike to inspiration point and finally TP the boys cabin because you promised the girls on the first day that you would. And then you lay in your sleeping bag all stinging with nettle scratches wondering how you will ever wake up in time to read your Bible in the morning, much less make it to Staff Meeting. But you do, because there is no way you will survive unless you are clutching the hand of Jesus for every stumbling step.

Being spent is Scruffy on Sunday in the summer. Weeping through the worship time and dropping off to sleep during the sermon. Don’t worry, I jab him awake with my thumb. But anyone who has spent a summer at camp understands being spent.

This is what we have to offer you.

At Camas Meadows Bible Camp you will spend yourselves.

But even though you may feel like a chocolate chip cookie that has been jumped upon by rabid orangutans and then tossed on the freeway and run over by three dump trucks and a trailer hauling elephants, this is ok with God.

He can do so much after we have crumbled.

In that moment that we give up, that we fall in a heap at His feet and tell Him we cannot go on. That is when the real work begins. Not our work, but His. You will see God’s glory, if you stick around after you have been entirely spent.

And so I implore you, come serve at Camas Meadows, or on a short term mission, or with Campus Crusade or Compassion or World Vision or…. Spend yourself on behalf of others and watch God do what He does best. He takes our emptiness and brings about His glory. Life for us and everyone around us.

This is what He does, even with those who are spent. Especially with those who are spent.

Boo Boo

Scruffy is hauling his 200+ board games back home today. The spring CamasCon is over and now they must all be placed back on the shelf in our dinning room. Scruff started this board game retreat seven years ago because of his personal passion for strategy board games and the people who play them.

Yep, Scruffy is a card-carrying geek. He even has a profile on www.boardgamegeek.com. Christian gamers from all over the state and even a few other places as well, congregate at Camas for a weekend clustered around the camp tables playing games. They nibble snacks that aren’t messy because that would mean food dust on the games. My brother brings up a 3-foot-long gummy worm for everyone to eat and wears his Yoshi sweats the whole time. And pretty much everyone doesn’t sleep.

Jeffery, the youth pastor from Little Stone Church, was the speaker this week and he talked about growing up as one thing and becoming something new in Christ. A story that Scruffy has in common with him. My three sons did the very best quiet sitting that I have ever observed. Usually I must hover around them at camp saying things like: “Sit down. Stop bouncing on the couch and kicking your feet in the air. People don’t like you to sit on their heads and pull their ears while they are playing, boys.” And yes, I did say some of these things…but not the whole time. The boys are growing up into sweet little geeks that make their Daddy proud.

CamasCon is a strange and lovely time of refreshment. Fifty-three campers came, not counting my boys, with at least half of them being new. And yeah, Scruff has to transport his 200+ games back and forth twice a year. But to Scruff it is worth any hassle. How often do you get to play and worship with people who have a passion for exactly the same things that you do? CamasCon provides this service for the geeks that I love.

Boo Boo

Yogi has been many things up here at camp. A camp counselor (yep, Yogi and Boo Boo…but I must point out that my name came first), a longtime friend, and now one of our board members. He was up the other night and I asked if he could remember any moments from camp that might help me with the blog. 

There was one year that he had a group of guys in his cabin who had chosen to follow Christ the summer before. Yogi came upon them with a pile of cassette tapes (I told you this was a long time ago) jubilantly yanking all of the tape out in long strands of destruction. They felt the tapes were hindering their walk with the Lord and were sacrificing their beloved music in order to serve Him better.

Yogi was amazed because he was watching fruit ripen that had been planted a year before. Their counselor from the previous summer had mentioned the music. But it was only after a year back at school and another summer of fun and teaching and being urged forward in their walk with God, that this seed matured.

And so Yogi ushered these boys into his cabin and loved them and played night games with them and watched in wonder as the seeds of the summer before bore fruit right before his eyes. They were ready to move on. Ready to let go of the things they had loved before and devote themselves to God. The previous counselor did not get to watch this moment. It was Yogi, who stepped in and watered those seeds. Yogi was granted the privilege of observing the fruit.

Planting and watering and harvesting, all these things occur at camp. So do not get discouraged with the role you are are given. God calls us to serve and the harvest will be His. One job is not more noble than another.

God has mighty plans and He wants to use you and He wants to use me. Maybe we are planters or watering the seeds. Perhaps we see the harvest after others have poured out their lives and love upon someone for years. Just be faithful with every day that is given. Our Lord is good. Remember that He loves each one of His children, no matter which part of the field they are toiling upon. We are his servants and all the Glory belongs to our Lord. 

I Corinthians 3:8-9a–“The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service…”

Boo Boo