A Day in the life...numero dos

Alright, so today begins with a recap of yesterday. I am growing to love meals more and more every day - it's a chance to be with some fellow ministry folk and hear stories, crazy, funny, interesting, and well, sometimes just plain wrong. What can you do.

I got a chance to take part in some water games with one of the cabins yesterday which was a blast, and a lot of fun to see the kids work together and have a good time at it. (and our team won - WOO!) The day was good, and after supper, we did something called prayer PARTS (praise, ask, repent, thank, share) which are all different words to represent the way we pray. The overall message was good, however, I think I was a little too preoccupied by a group of kids that thought they would just not pay attention and make fun of basically the whole process. I find sometimes that I have very little patience for the "popular" crew - at least the ones who make it their business to make it known that they are indeed better than those around them. I spent half the evening watching the little cliques move around together and hardly mingle at all with the others. Sad...alas...I'm not in charge...it's not my place.

I got to spend campfire with my girls - that was a blast. I've also gotten to spend a lot of time talking to one of the other sponsors that's here that is almost my same age - it's nice to be able to hang out together. I also really like getting chances to talk to the counselors - I'm back in my element here at camp. It's fun looking at them and remembering my days at camp as a counselor - even though it seems like it was an eternity ago - not just a couple years. Your life was contained in a backpack, worship leading was second nature, being goofy is just expected almost...yeah. What a great place. I drive myself nuts though watching procedure and dynamics and different ways things are done - I think I am doomed to forever criticize the way things are done at other camps. However, I do really like this one - I really think they've got some things figured out.

I've been thinking about how much fun it would be to do something either the tail end of this summer or the beginning of next summer with the kids and doing camp out nights - fires do amazing things to kids. It brings out something in them that you just can't produce any other way - I don't know what it is. But, how cool would it be to have a bunch of kids out, do a game, then sit them down around a fire and do a Bible Study and sing songs? So simple, and yet so powerful...

This morning I got the privilege of leading the staff in a devotion for the morning, and I chose to do one out of a book called Ordinary Joy, which I found at Synod Assembly last weekend and realized it was one that I had been meaning to get. The first story in the book sets the tone for the rest of it - a conversation between a photographer and a student:

"Look closer."

"I am looking closer," I said, frustration rising in my throat. "I've been staring at this bicycle now for two hours, and all I see is a bicycle."

"Then look closer," Rich urged.

I was taking photography lessons from my friend Rich, who, in another time and place, had been a photojournalist. the key to taking interesting pictures, Rich explained, was in learning not to just look at an object, but to see it with fresh eyes, to recognize what is present but unnoticed. Rich gave me an assignment: take thirty-six pictures of the same object. Each composition had to be different, not because of a change in surroundings, but because it reflected a different point of view. Since I was a cycling enthusiast, I chose my bike.

The assignment seemed easy at first: Here's my bike from the front. this is my bike from the back, from the side, here's a view from the top...now what? This was impossible. I squeezed off about ten frames, and I was stuck. There was nothing left to see, no pictures left to take.

"Look closer."

I threw up my arms to make sure Rich knew how unreasonable he was being, again leaned in toward the bike and wondered what he could see that I was missing. "It's easy for you," I grumbled. "You've trained your eyes to recognize beauty. All I see are a few metal tubes and a couple of wheels." That's when I noticed the graphic pattern the spokes made as they flared out from the wheel hub, intersecting each other in a pattern called 'lacing.' I grabbed my camera and moved in tight for a close-up. Glancing toward the handlebars, I realized how gracefully the brake cables curved and how interesting they were from this angle. Soon I could see how bits of dirt and grease clung to the chain, creating miniature mountain ranges.

Rich taught me a fundamental principle of photography that day: Look closer. If you want to see beauty, learn to view ordinary things in new ways.

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Life's joy reveals itself not only as we encounter a Savior who weaves himself into the fabric of routine living, but as we act on his invitation to rediscover the significance of serving him in ordinary ways. The most inconsequential detail of a servant life carries with it all the power of God's grace, for Jesus transforms the ordinary things we do into something more.

"Look closer," my friend reminded me. That's pretty good advice. Rather than seeing the ordinary as something to be avoided or a source of discontent, look closer. Peer deeper. Joy arrives when you discover God's fingerprints on the surface of each day.

-Excerpted from Ordinary Joy by Joe Campeau

Now, this afternoon I am home for a while, and back again tomorrow. See the beauty. Everywhere.