Watershed

For the third weekend in a row, I went away. Excited for the annual trip to Camp Dixie, I geared up for the social and the spiritual, an alliterative combination of words that describe nearly every Christian getaway out there. This one, however, is near and dear to my heart. As a senior, it's my final year. So, we vowed to make it our best, to go out with a bang and to blob, go cart, swim, jump, hammock, run, canoe, dance, eat, sing to our hearts' content. The Lord took our willingness and ran.

"Engaging hearts and minds in worship" is normally what praise bands say prior to entering into a series of songs, but truly, truly I tell you, that's what it does. There's something about songs, as evidenced by all 150 Psalms, that allows the Spirit to do His work in tendering our hearts. For many years, I frowned upon the sensorial experience of our Lord, thinking it was only for the weak-minded and shallow-hearted. All it took was a good whipping in systematic theology, catechisms and Puritan prayer to spiral me into proper Christian reflection. Boy, was I missing out?! And while a foundational bedrock of theology supplements my meditation and grounds me in the Truth my heart so easily forgets, if I don't feel Him, breathe Him in and experience the tingling sensation the Spirit provides, then I'm severely neglecting the totality of His promises. And while I've spent many months diving deep into spiritual gifts that rocked me like a buoy in the perfect storm, I realized that I worship an immutable God regardless of my articulation of Him. Otherwise, I am not completely perceiving my share in the spoils of Christ's victory on the cross. Christ died so that I would live and have life to the full, able to glorify Him AND enjoy Him.

In full awareness of my getaway privilege, I went off into the woods to spend time with the Lord: to hang from His trees, to dialogue with Him, to read His love poetry to me and to write Him some, to surround myself with one of the greatest testimonies to His expansiveness (both micro and macro scales), and to sing and dance with His people. It was imperfect in every way - sticky, smelly, writhing, restless, irritated, sore, cold and slow - but nonetheless a slice of the final version that's to come in the next life.