I Love Black Lake

So tomorrow is the beginning of Jr. High week down at Black Lake Bible Camp, and I am going down to be a councilor.  The past two summers I had been on full summer staff so this year was a little weird not being down in Olympia the whole summer. 

But I am also very grateful for the opportunities that have surfaced from staying home.  I got to be a leader on the Wave Campout with the Jr. highers in my youth group.  I learned a lot from Eric and the other staff and also from some of the Jr. highers as well.  One student in particular from the other group that joined us has had a prosthetic on his leg below his knee since he was 6 weeks old.  He was way more willing and able to many of the activities than i would be in his situation.  He jumped into the river along with everyone else and swam in the lake I’m pretty sure more than anyone.  But I was inspired the most by him when we went on a roughly 4-5 mile hike round trip.  Watching him trek the entire way battling through lousy trail quality and stumbling a few times was very rewarding for me.  Every time he stumbled or fell he would bounce right back up and keep on going.  If it was me, I would have taken one misstep or fallen once and just given up, but he never once complained or got discouraged. I thank God that I had the opportunity to witness such great strength.

It got me thinking about us as Christians.  How many of us will encounter a mishap or have something happen that we didn’t plan for and throw in the towel and give up?  But more importantly, how many of us take it all in stride and keep going and say, “Lord, You are above all things”?  I know that I don’t all the time.  I mostly just get upset and lateron figure out what I should have done at the time.

Going back to the topic of Black Lake, when I packing today I started to get my things together and got the four bibles I am bringing (three of which are different translations).  I put them in my backpack first and jokingly said to myself, “Well, looks like I’ve got all I need.”  But then it got me thinking, how much do we depend on the Lord anyways.  Some people still think that they can give someone Salvation, when in reality all we can do is get an assist because it’s all between the Lord and the individual to complete the “slam dunk”.  A friend of mine once said that we are at our best when we run out, whether its running out of energy or running out of things to say.  Because when we are empty we stop relying on ourselves and start to give God a true opportunity to work through us.

I’ll be down at BLBC from this Sunday (13th) till Saturday (18th) then again on the 27th-2nd.  Again, your prayers are extremely helpful and I already know stamina will be up there on prayer requests.

Ricky “Revlon” Judd