In a few days, children will be gathering for Vacation Bible School at St. Mark’s. When I saw their theme for the week, it struck me as a good description of our whole life with Christ: Camp Discovery! For me, it captures the open-endedness of our daily journey in faith and the endless possibilities to discover who God is for us and who we are for each other. It also speaks to the wonders of creation and to the joy of discovering God in the natural world and in the ever-expanding universe.
In our life of faith, It is natural to seek answers and to long for understanding, but if we ever think that we have learned everything there is to learn or understood God completely, the joy of discovery is turned into rigid dogma and dull narrow-mindedness. On the other hand, when we see our whole life as one big Camp Discovery, every day is filled with the kind of novelty and wonder that our children will experience when they gather here next week.
In a song that I learned as a child, there is a phrase that has stuck with me through every stage of life. Remembering God’s great faithfulness, the hymn writer says “Morning by morning new mercies I see.” In this stage of your life, may that be the testimony that you, too, bear within you! With God, there is always something new to discover! You may be long beyond the days of your childhood, but you can still approach life as you did in those early years, with hearts and minds that are wide open to the wonders of each new day.
Pastor Jan Ruud