So just a little bit ago I spent an amazing week tucked in
the mountains of Colorado at one of my favorite place. A little Lutheran camp where kids found out a
little more about the amazing grace of our father brought to us by the Son,
produced by the Holy Spirit, and the executive producers Steven Spielberg and Brian
Grazer. Yet with this amazing week I found the amazing amount of accidental wisdom
that comes from the questions, comments, and realizations of high school youth.
So here are just a couple of the amazing things I learned about the youth,
myself, and my faith.
First, in the world there are two aggressive and competing theologies
on the history of our world. There are creationists who believe, God said let
there be light, flicked a switch, and there was light. This is their Fact. To
them, the fact is that God the father, created everything, with the wink of his
eye, like Mickey Mouse in fantasia making the brooms and mops dance and work,
brought something into nothingness. For those of a scientific mind the fact is
that there were a compression of molecules and matter that was constricted into
the smallest of spaces collided with a particle traveling faster than the speed
of light. This caused a reaction that expanded the matter causing nuclear
reactions that created stars, galaxies, planets, and eventually life. This is
their fact. Through the conversations
with these youth I have found the one thing much more convincing and powerful than
either of these two contradicting facts. The Truth behind the matter and unlike
most of my writings the capital T is not a typo. I have found my Truth in the
creation story and in turn most of the Old Testament. The Truth I have found is that God did create
everything. He spun the galaxies on his finger, she wove in her womb the
essence of life, and it balanced the physical with the metaphysical. I believe
the Big Bang happened on God’s command. I believe life evolved from the mud of
the earth just as the bible says, and I also believe the evolution from that
mud can be found in the theories and scientific evidence of our smartest scientists.
The Truth is that these two facts are
not contradictory but walk hand and hand, and in that cohesion I find Truth.
Second, I have found that every one of God’s gifts can’t be
as simple as, “here is the gift, the end”. Every gift can be broken down in to
multiple levels and attached to different parts of our lives so that there isn’t
a single action, decision, or word that can’t be completely rapped in God. This
week at camp I discovered the complexity of GRACE! That being the Love of a
father that is unearned and unexpected, which leads to the Father’s expectation
of us to no longer be sedentary, to the true joy we find in expressing that
same grace to others. I saw this in the youth at this high mountain adventure of
ministry. I saw a child finally accept that no matter what their past was that
love can was over their scars and bruises. I lavished in the fact those who are
young in faith can take up the cross and bare it to the world unafraid of the
world that my persecute them for it, because they can take heart in the Truth
that Christ has concurred the world. (John 16:33) Finally the joy I felt when I
saw all three come together as a teenage boy hung out my window on the
interstate trying to make other vehicles smile with a thumbs up and a wave, and
when they were shot down or frowned at by other cars only a single word was
shouted from his lips. GRACE! As if to shout that without joy and love the
world is empty. So to you, the unjoyful, the naysayer, the person who demands
their life be based on facts instead of Truth. I, much like the kid I look up
to, must shout the Truth I know about this world… GRACE!
So here I stand, on the wrong side of the cross,
holding in my hand a book some would call the ultimate fact on these matters,
and think how wrong some people are. For me, Christ spoke in parables not
because he thought the world needed more facts. God knows we have enough facts
flying around. Instead Christ spoke to us in Truths. These Truths of love, life,
and freedom; The Truth of the love of God that is formed in our hearts that
should be a beacon for the world. The Truth that life is not meant to be
squandered by selfish acts of Christianity but in the celebration of the
Community Christ offers. The Truth that freedom from the burden of our short
comings and the freedom to use the gifts we have been given to become the
people God has created us to be. It is in these Truths that the complete
celebration of Life can be found. In the love of God and one another, the Life
we are called to live, and the Freedom to be exactly who were are called to be
and not what the world thinks we should be. All of this I learned from High
Schoolers, and the is the TRUTH.
