Teen Camp
I hated church camp. I have always been a weirdo who liked to go to bed at a decent time and wake up early, even in my teen years. Teen camp was centered on staying up late, waking early, and eating bad food. These were all things I despised. Yet, I went every year. In my intellectual 20’s – when I knew the most I have ever known – I pontificated about how we pretended to be able to escape this wretched secular world for just a few moments while bathing in the vilest home of millions of escherichia coli and staphylococcus aureus. These things, to me, were intelligent and not wrong. The church shuttles off the teenagers to some remote “camp” where the Lord had shown down before and parted the algae-laden paddle boat pond to reveal his undying passion for being involved in teenage romantic escapades. God seemed to be deeply concerned with who you were kissing and not kissing in the middle of these woods, divinely revealing to boys and girls who they were to spend this week in love with. This place’s purpose, this antiquated practice, had truly been lost to time and culture, but we still rehearsed this ritual because we were church kids, and that is what church kids did.
Yet, here I am typing these words and memories out because of a few moments at a bacteria-laden Christianized version of American Pie’s “band camp.” God’s presence is thick in the world; every moment we stop to take notice of it, we can see it. There is something about “retreating” to the woods with a few other like-minded people to notice this genuine presence intentionally. One fateful night at a camp altar, when God took a break from advising on teenage romance and protecting us from bacterial infections, I felt God's presence and heard him calling me by name. That moment has anchored my life and given it purpose.
I cannot fathom why God chose that moment in a place I did not want to be. Or why he would choose someone as unpopular and dull as I was/am is a mystery, but he did. God has a sneaky habit of showing up when you least expect him but have created enough margin for him to slip in. We have packed schedules and better disinfectants these days, but we hear from God a lot less. That is probably because we do not get to a quiet place and intentionally try to notice his presence.