The Lead of Love

I’ve been thinking through the last couple of weeks so that I could figure out what to report to you. So much has happened and there is so much to look forward to as well, here in Boston. I'll save the future for another post, however. After Project Destiny ended I had about a week off before getting back into the swing of things, in preparation for Summer Teen Conference—our youth retreat in Alfred, Maine. The retreat, over the years, has become a significant way for us to wrap up summer ministries and integrate students from the outreach programs into our regular youth groups. The theme this year was “The Lead of Love,” how God leads us not to a place, but to a person, not to a destination, but to a destiny.

The preparation was pretty adventurous on several fronts. On one front was worship team, where I got to help the students learn new songs, but also, I prepared to play drums for the first time in “public.” You can imagine for yourself how that sounded. The other front was the creation of the camp handbook. In a series of complicated plot twists involving multiple trips to Copy Cop, a misguided trip to Brookline, and an all-nighter, the handbook did not get completed until a few hours before the retreat started! Thank God that it got done—it could have been so much more complicated.

So it was that despite my being really tired, Summer Teen Conference began. I had taken my 9^th grade boys as my small group for the weekend. It is the last time that I will be their counselor, as they are moving into the high school youth group. It was important, then, that we had some good one-on-one time: i.e. huddles. We had our huddles on interesting places—a sailboat, a canoe, a porch swing…I was really struck by some of the things the guys shared during their huddle time and appreciated their openness about family, faith, and sin. We had some memorable discussions- one of them on a shooting range talking about God's design for suffering, one of them in my 4x4's trunk in the middle of a downpour. Our last discussion, where we shared the things we needed prayer for during the school year, was probably our most important. Not all these boys are Christians, but I can see how God is leading them all to know Jesus Christ better as their Lord and Savior and follow him. Having 6^th graders in the fall will be so different.

I know some of you had us in your prayers—thanks! Everything went pretty well and I feel like the weekend effectively helped to integrate the PD kids into youth ministry, as well as building up the young Christians in our church. Middlebury-folks—you might be interested to know that Tom and Megan were on staff at Camp Cherith at the same time we were there for the conference. It was a treat to see them in between the huddles and discussions. Finally, I’ll leave you with a picture I took while taking some time off to go hiking (FINALLY!!!) in Vermont this past week, as well as some lyrics from Caedmon’s call. As I begin work as a teacher again tomorrow, it seems like an appropriate way to wrap up the summer’s round of postings. Thanks for praying and reading this summer.

Looking back at the road so far, the journey’s left its share of scars
Mostly from leaving the narrow and straight
Looking back I can clearly see, man is more than the sum of his deeds
How you made good of this mess I’ve made is a profound mystery…

Looking back I can finally see how failures bring humility
Brings me to my knees, helps me see my need for Thee.

…looking back, I see the lead of Love.