Sunday, July 24, 2011

Only one thing

This weekend I visited the camp where I worked for years as a counselor, and earlier attended as a camper. It is always beautiful to return. After a day full of sailing, volleyball, swimming, catching up with a very dear friend, I lay on a bench and looked up at the (rather cloudy) sky.

There was a time, here, 3 years ago: lying under the stars with my 16-year-old girls, I ask the question "Where have you been in your relationship with God over the past year?" They all share, and one girl is left. "I can't have a relationship with God," she says, and after some prodding..."because I am gay." And after that moment of truth come many difficult and beautiful and important conversations, whispered in a bunk, confessions, assurances that God's love is bigger. We can't resolve things this summer, but we've cracked through and we are dealing with the real stuff, the gospel, our longings and fears, the stuff that counts.

Another time, sitting on one of these very benches, 5 years ago: hurt and confused and doubting and crying to my director Ellen, telling her the gospel feels empty to me, that I don't need to be forgiven of sin, that while I know I still love and need God, the message of the cross is a formula that doesn't ring true. She retells the message of the cross to me in a way that lets me hope it is my very uncertainty and brokenness that Christ bore.

Waking every morning to this lake, to prayer, to knowing that this may be the one or two or seven days that I have left to love these 10 girls that are sleeping in my cabin, these girls who flirt for validation or cut themselves or have too many questions or long to be closer to God. These girls who need the gospel, need to know God's infinite love.

Look at me now, I've forgotten to live this way, this simple way, where there is only one purpose---loving people and helping them encounter God. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me (col 1:29). Now, rather, it's checklists, and getting things done, and making sure I am seeing the friends I should see, and conserving the resources I should conserve, and teaching the people I should teach, and defending myself against the ever-encroaching conflicts and weariness and demands.

Unfortunately this is all too familiar. Posted above my desk at work is an index card which I don't see anymore because it's been there too long: "Martha Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed."

1 comment:

  1. Amen! Jesus is the bread of life; the alpha and the omega; Lord and Savior; the heart of worship!

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