Diamonds and Smoke

Untucked shirts and the ceasing of chants and various yells marked the end of week 1 at Pine Cove. I truly believe God was made more real and viewed more accurately in the lives of most of my cabin, but for the other few, we can only wait and pray to the God who grants belief to the dead. It was a week of exhaustion, reliance on God, and brokenness at times. But overall, a week that will last for eternity more then most weeks of my life, not because of my own good doings, but because of a lack of the ability to escape trial and hardship, a lack of a place to run from situations not pleasing to my natural flesh. And for this i am most thankful to the Father. In the few minutes i have, i want to share two things that God taught me this week that have stuck in my mind.
The first has to do with God showing me the utter death that is existing apart from Christ. There is something about spending every waking and sleeping moment with eight graders or really anyone for that matter, that allows you to see what people are really made of. The hopelessness of one of the kids in my cabin was made visible to my soul during a time of worship. He was a camper i had talked with extensively about his need for Jesus, but not wanting to submit to God, he continues to live on the treacherous edge of a "form of religion" without submission or the receiving of grace. The beauty of Christ surrounded my lifted affections as the room was filled with the praises of the King, this child standing in front of me perhaps thought it foolish that we would sing so fervently to someone unseen. And in that moment i started to cry for him. I could sense the death and meaninglessness that surrounded his life, and at the same time, the light that is Christ in me seemed much brighter in contrast to his darkness. I wanted him to know what i knew, to taste what i was tasting, to eat what I had feasted on. But for all my longing, i realized it was only the Spirit that could make his heart soft. Tears welling up, voice shouting, i pleaded that God would change his heart. And now we come to the title of this entry, Diamonds and Smoke. Even in my moment of brokenness, unspeakable joy was right there with me. The joy that comes when a child discovers he has a natural talent for sports, or the confidence that comes when a man learns he is the descendant of a proud line of forefathers, the joy that comes when you realize you have come into something radiant and bigger than yourself. When two similar bodies of bone, flesh, and pumping blood become completely different because one is more real than the other. And that is precisely what it was, i realized i was more real then the lost soul in front of me. What we lived for, what we had been saved to was completely different. Myself to the infinite river of life and him to nothing but fading things, myself filled with the ultimate reality, himself worshipping the empty creations of the reality. And there we stood, my soul clashing like a diamond against a cloud of vapor or fading smoke. A diamond that was created for the streets of heaven where I will spend forever worshipping the one who takes living phantoms and makes them perfect, radiant, real, worthy to stand in the presence of the consuming fire. For we will be made like him! We are so much more than flesh and bone in Christ!

You will have to ask me about the other thing...i need to get some lunch before opening day...

Pray for me this week that i will rely on the strength of God, that i will be a champion of weakness, that i will do nothing for the approval of man but for God alone, and that i will remember that my number one priority is not to love these kids but to know God first and then to love.

Love you guys...and by guys i mean guys and gals!