UNPRECEDENTED!
By Wayne Williams --
Hey campers! This is our annual church campout weekend! This is the weekend I’ve looked forward to every year for almost 30 years. I love the smell of campfire smoke. I love sitting around the campfire with friends old and new and talking about things heavy and trivial. I love the quiet of the early morning and the noise of happy kids on their bikes and skateboards. I love the solitude of Saturday afternoon when everyone else is on the float trip, and I love the crowded fellowship of the Saturday evening potluck and the campfire worship. I like camping in general, but I really love camping with the church I love.
But, as you know, and it pains me to say it, our church campout has been COVID-cancelled this year. Barton Park, as most other campgrounds, will not allow gatherings of any size, not even cross-campsite visiting: no potlucks, no worship, no friends around the campfire, no sharing meals, and no helping each other set up camp. In other words, no fellowship, which is the main reason we do it every year and the main reason we love it. The campout has been rained out a few times over the years, but I can’t remember it ever being cancelled. It is (and here comes one of our favorite words of the COVID crisis) unprecedented!
We may not be able to camp together for a weekend, but that doesn’t mean we can’t fellowship together. We can gather in groups of about 10 in back yards or big rooms. Fellowship can happen at six feet! Paulette and I have hosted several delightful small gatherings in our back yard, including sitting around a firepit with friends old and new and talking about things heavy and trivial. I encourage you to be intentional about making such opportunities and taking such opportunities in the weeks ahead. In this unprecedented time, we may even be able to experience an unprecedented level of Christian fellowship.
We Christians can appreciate “unprecedented” better than most. So much about Christianity is unprecedented. God’s unimaginably great love for us, when he has every reason not to, is unprecedented. That the Creator would actually become one of us, a creature, so we could know him well, is unprecedented. The life that Jesus lived, totally as God intended humans to live life, is unprecedented. That the incarnate God would allow himself to be tortured and killed, taking the punishment that we deserved, is unprecedented. That God will actually join himself to humans, that he lives in anyone who trusts in Jesus, is unprecedented.
Cancelling the campout is unprecedented. The COVID pandemic is unprecedented. But let’s keep perspective. Even a world-wide health crisis is a small thing compared to the unprecedented things God has done for us.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” That, my friends, is truly unprecedented.