"Well, I'm Back"

Those three words ended the greatest story ever written by man. I think they'll suffice to begin my first blog post since camp.

Be still, and know that I am God.

I feel like, after 5 weeks at a Christian camp, nestled away from the world, serving God, I should have something more profound to share than that.

I don't.

There was a great emphasis this year on not just having a "spiritual high." On not being so in love with God at camp and willing to serve him and laying your life down at his feet and then going home and falling into the same sins and depressions that hold us captive throughout each year. We wanted people to meet God at camp, to get real with God at camp, but also to take that relationship home with them. To meet God at home.


I always used to struggle with this. I would find hope and relief at camp, but somehow I could not transfer that back home. I found a sanctuary in Delta where I would meet with God, but I could not find him when I left the sanctuary. I could not find him in my real world.

Until I went to the Dominican last summer. And I expected God to blow me away. But he didn't.

Just like coming home from Delta this year, I didn't have an awesome healing story, or some miracle to share, or any fantastic way in which I had witnessed God at work. But God was at work, on a deeper level.

I learned some basic truths about Christianity. The simple things that we often need reminded of. I learned that if I really truly wanted a relationship with God, I was going to have to spend time with him.

Shocker.

But I didn't want to. I mean seriously, read your Bible, pray everyday? Is that all you've got for me? It sounds like a cheap Sunday school answer to me. But that's the answer I've found.

Someone once told me to "fake it till you make it." To force yourself to read the Bible until you actually felt like it. I thought that sounded cheap, like some cheater's way of building a relationship with God. But I'm sure all you married couples out there could tell me, relationships are not solely based on feelings; they are about choices. 

So I had to choose to follow God. I had to choose to spend time with him. Even though I didn't feel like it. Every day I woke up early (I can thank the goat who bleated outside my window at 5 every morning), so I would have time to read my Bible and talk to God. And every day I started learning things. Even if I only had time to read one verse.

The cool thing is, that lifestyle didn't end when I came home (although there was no goat to wake me up). And the lifestyle I had at Delta doesn't have to end when I come home from there either.

And you don't have to go to camp for God to show up in your life. He wants to be there with you, every step of the way. You can find God in your real world. All you have to do is be still enough to hear him.