This post is dreadfully late. I'm so sorry! Better late than never, right?
About
three weeks ago I returned from church camp, which you know is one of my
favorite weeks of the year. Some years I see, feel, and hear clearly the
lessons God is teaching me; some years it takes a while for it to sink in. This
year it took some time, but this week I finally began understand my Jesus Walk
Lesson.
For the last five years our camp has
done a night-time walk with a spiritual focus. We call it the Jesus Walk. For
the first two years it took place on a bike path circling a lake (the same path
we use for the “PDA Hike”), the third year was on a new path, and the last two years we’ve kept the Jesus
Walk confined to our campground utilizing a part of camp and a path we don’t
regularly use during the week.
This year’s Jesus Walk went
well. Jesus and I had a nice moment and
a long chat, and we ended the night with some incredible worship. But I didn’t
feel like I had learned my Big Lesson. (See my blog post “Change of Plans” for
more information.) That came on Friday of camp, but I didn’t figure it out til
last week. Let me rewind.
Each year we take a “Stroll Around
the Lake” in the state park, but not on our camp site. It is unofficially
nicknamed the “PDA Hike” because camp couples tend to walk together and the
adults pretend to look the other way if they hold hands. It’s really nothing,
just a relaxed evening walk. This year we had storms on Wednesday and were
treated to some brilliant lightning displays right before the stroll. So we canceled it, loaded up the busses, and
headed back to camp. When the rain never came, we took an optional Stroll
within camp (the same path as this year’s Jesus Walk). I walked with different
groups of teens, and one sweet girl asked if I was ok, because she knows I
sometimes struggle with loneliness on this particular walk. I told her I was
ok, and I was. But ten minutes later I was walking along, with just my
flashlight for company, and the familiar pangs began. I tried to distract
myself, and found a group to walk and talk with, and was fine.
Now fast forward to Friday night. As
some of the oldest campers, the girls in my cabin stayed up late helping pack
up camp and were hanging out, supervised, up where we’d done the Jesus Walk and
the Stroll. I went to go find them and
check on them, armed with my flashlight. After hanging out with them all for a
while, I headed back to the cabin to check my sugar. So once again, I was
walking alone late at night down that
path in the camp, but this time without my flashlight, which I had handed to one of the teens never to see
it again. (Or so I thought. They returned it later.) You would think I’d be
bummed out or at least creeped out, but this time I was fine, strangely. I knew
about where I was, how long it would
take me to get to the cabin, who was behind me, and what lay before me. So I
was good. And I didn’t think another thing of it. Til last week.
Last week I was jamming out in my
car to “Never Once.” The chorus goes, “Never once did we ever walk along/never
once did you leave us on our own/ you are faithful, God you are faithful…..
Every step we are breathing in your grace/ ever more we’ll be breathing out
your praise…” And it hit me. Both times
at camp, I was surrounded. By the campers and staff behind me, and the God who
walked with me and in front of me. On Friday I was aware of it, while on
Wednesday I was too caught up by my physical alone-ness to notice that I’m
never alone. On Wednesday I muddled through trail, but on Friday I walked
confidently, hearing my surroundings and with the Light inside me instead of in my hand (flashlight).
That happens a lot to me in life,
too. My hope for the new school is that I walk as I did on Friday, confident
that I’m not alone, and sure that I’ll reach my destination, even though it’s dark and hard to see. Basically,
that I’ll trust the One who walks with me to get me safely through the
darkness.
