Devotionals

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"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will." (Romans 12:2, NIV)

If there is one word that describes my expectations from our camp staff at Hidden Acres, it would be “conform”; especially our summer staff. 120 kids arrive in June all excited about the possibilities of the summer ministry at our Bible camp; each counselor has prayed about and dreamed of what it will be like to lead a group of eight to ten young campers for a week of fun and spiritual refreshment.

I ask the summer staff to conform to our way of life, our way of thinking, our way of doing things; we are not always right, but it is the system that is in place that has withstood the test of time.

I was driving past the wood pile in June when I saw a new full time staff member giving directions to a volunteer. He was having the volunteer carefully stack up this wood at our wood splitting station; this wood would eventually make it to out to our different lodges, where it would be stacked up for winter consumption

“We don’t stack the wood,” I said, “Just throw it in a pile on top of the cement slab.” He looked at me incredulously as if I had just asked him to eat a snake. For the rest of the summer, the wood pile grew into a large mountain of split wood.

This staff member and myself never clicked the rest of the year; he would not follow instructions well; if I said paint it blue, he would paint it green and say, “I thought green would look better.” Needless to say he was gone by mid-February.

The day after he left, I was driving into camp and looked over to the wood pile area; there, shining in the early morning sun was a freshly split, neatly stacked row of firewood smiling back at me. I smiled back, and only said, “That is not how we do it.”

Instead of the woodpile, often times we need to go to the woodshed where we need to hear our longsuffering Savior gently say, “That is not how we do it.”

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