I’m writing this week’s devotional from Gardner-Webb University while serving as one of the adult chaperones attending CentriKid Camp along 
with nine of our Imagine Kids. Jill Turner, Tyra and I made a pact to trade-off in the afternoons while the kids are in Team Time, recreation, and Track Time (it takes you a couple of days to learn the proper camp lingo for all the different activities). Though we did it out of self-preservation, it has given me time to dash off a few thoughts to send to Lydia Smith to publish in this week’s newsletter.
Being at CentriKid has reminded me of some of my own camp experiences during my formative summers. I recall one from my teenage years with my MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship) group at Camp Carolwood, near Lenoir, NC, when Molly Levin was our summer field education seminary student (like our ministerial interns at Imagine Church).
I’ll never forget the night Molly had us all write down on slips of paper things that we had regretted doing: gossip, lustful thoughts, lying, cheating, things like that. Then she talked about how, through Jesus, God had made us new creations and wiped all that away. Those things no longer had any hold on us. As if to illustrate that, one by one, Molly asked us to throw our slips of paper into the campfire.
Then, she went around the group and gave us each a new slip of paper. On them she had written a different set of words: things like forgiveness, grace, compassion, mercy, redemption, restoration, patience, kindness. These were the things, she said, that God had given us to replace all those things that we regretted saying or doing.
That’s a pretty powerful exercise for a 13-or-14 year-old, because I remember it to this day. And through such camp experiences, I learned early-on something of the nature and character of God — that ours is a God of forgiveness, grace, compassion, mercy, redemption, restoration, patience, and kindness.
It’s the same hope I have for our Imagine Nation Youth and our Imagine Kids during their summer camp experiences, like the one we’re having this week. I pray that they will listen, as Lydia expressed so well, not only with their ears, but also with their hearts.
