Lessons from Camp - Day 1

"Seek God until He breaks your heart, and then preach from the bottom of your broken heart." This

is what I often say to those I mentor. So with seven weeks of speaking, writing devotions and heading up ministry at a summer camp, I anticipate being challenged, stretched and broken as the weeks roll on. Each day I will post some lessons to be learned from the devotions and messages we have studied as a camp.

When I think of working at camp, I think about bringing an end to conflict. I feel like that's how a cabin leader spends most of their time – splitting up campers who are angry over cheating or mistreatment of each other. Age, race and gender don't seem to affect this problem– it is simply the human condition to have an inherent ability to engage in conflict easily. More than this, as we conflict with each other, we do so while appealing to some understanding of both morals and rules - as we accuse the other of being in the 'wrong,' we assume there is a 'wrong,' and that they should understand it. The human condition of conflict and morality is surely no coincidence – I believe we all share common roots in both our corruption and our desire to see a standard followed.

In the beginning, God created everything. He made the world, and it was perfect. He created two people, Adam and Eve - the source of our commonality. When God put them on the earth, He gave them one rule - 'do not eat the fruit of the tree.' Now God is an eternal God. And this is an eternal rule. Naturally, the punishment for breaking the eternal law of an eternal God must be an eternal one. No amount of time in prison (or other finite punishment) is going to satisfy an eternal God's justice. The only punishment that could fit the crime was an eternal one - someone had to die.

But God is a good God, and He had mercy on Adam. Someone had to die, so God took a lamb, killed the lamb and clothed Adam and Eve. He counted the death of the lamb as Adam's death, and Adam lived.

What Adam and Eve had done was tried to take the place of God. They had made their own rules. They promoted themselves to the position of God. They usurped His authority and this condition – this desire to be better than God – was passed on to their children. It became the permanent condition of humanity to, in our hearts, replace God with ourselves. Adam and Eve's first son killed their second son, because even after one generation he wanted to take the position of the Creator and be the one to decide who could live and who could die.

Several years later we come to the story of Noah in a day when men are described as being continually wicked, day in and day out, and this grieved God. God was going to judge, again. They had broken His rules, and they deserved to die. Men were breaking the eternal law of an eternal God - they deserved to die. But just like God had been willing to make a way of escape for Adam, He was willing to do that again. He told Noah how to build a boat, and there was a way of escape from the coming judgement.

For us today, not much has changed. We are born with this corruption and desire to make our own rules. We don't believe we are made in God's image, we imagine a god created in our own image. For example, take a look at the ten commandments and compare them to your own life. Keeping the ten commandments does not make us righteous, but breaking them does show us we are unrighteous.

But God has provided a way of escape. And this plan has been unfolding throughout time and throughout Scripture. The Bible, in one masterful story, reveals to us the character of God and the condition of humanity. But more than that, it reveals God's slowly unfolding plan to redeem all men and draw them back to Himself. It reveals His ultimate plan to provide not a lamb and not a boat, but His Son to be the way of escape from the coming judgement of God.

Thought of the day:

We are corrupt, and because of God's perfection deserve His punishment. But He offers a way of escape. If you crack open your Bible, you'll see His plan slowly unfurled throughout history. 

Kevin Deane
Posting from Camp Mini-Yo-We
Muskoka, Ontario