Without summer camp this year, many things were missed. Campers didn’t have outdoor fun with the mountains surrounding them or those memorable and engaging conversations with their Guides (counselors). Guides didn’t have the opportunity to pour into campers or find a community of people sharing a common goal with them, stretching them, knowing them, serving with them.
No one faced and overcame terrifying things like making it across and stepping off the platform of the high ropes course. Groups didn’t have the opportunity to grow together through team building at low ropes. Youth pastors weren’t given the time to just be and connect with their teens without the pressures of running the program.
Teens weren’t able to know each other more deeply, or find a sense of belonging, or to be known by people who truly care about them and believe in them. Teens and adults weren’t able to escape their noise to hear the whisper of God. To pull out of their every day context to contemplate big and important things or to find fresh perspective for their circumstances. They weren’t able to be filled with the hope that comes from hearing God’s Word and seeing it come alive to them personally. So much felt lost this summer as “COVID” shut the world down.
Sometimes that realization can feel hopeless, especially as the world continues to be so far outside of our normal. But this, friends, is not where we want to land. Because if you’ve walked with Jesus for any amount of time you know He makes a way where there is none. He brings into existence what doesn’t exist. He is the God of HOPE! So, we can’t sit in the place of what isn’t, or the fear of what we don’t know. We have to walk in faith if we are to be followers of Christ. What’s the old hymn?
Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth with grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.
Helen H. Lemmel, 1922
That’s the key. Looking to Jesus and not the mess surrounding us. He’ll lead you safely through, wrap you in His peace, and fill you with His joy. The world needs Jesus followers like this! Are you in?
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