“What is grace?” I haven’t really thought of the meaning behind this word that much until this summer. I realized how blessed we humans are and how beautiful it is to receive the grace of God, this gift of endless love, mercy, acceptance and forgiveness that God gives to us, to everyone! no matter if we are “good” or “bad”.
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).
The “secret of grace” and “secret of the kingdom” were the focus of camp Chandler - Alabama. This camp helped me to realize how we all experience grace in our lives and how to think about offering grace to others around us, to all people, even when it’s too hard to give it to who we think don’t deserve it, people who we don’t like, people who are different from us and people who heart us. Those people that we think are bad and are not a part of God’s kingdom are in fact are. God goes out to seek the lost. God finds us and comes into our hearts and love us and bring us home. God makes a decision for us. God comes into our world to invite us to join in God’s Kingdom building. We don’t find God, God finds us. God isn’t lost; we are. That’s the secret of the Kingdom. The kingdom isn’t about our leaving this world to go be with God. It’s about God coming into our world and choosing to be with us.
This camp was amazing! The nature of it, the lake, the trees and the weather were absolutely beautiful. It was kind of a small, quiet compared to my first camp but it was more close. Those thirty high school camper are such insightful, mature and smart people and I enjoyed meeting them a lot.
At Peace and Justice night, I got the chance to give my workshop to the whole camp and it was great. Everyone was interested and involved and I loved it. They were really affected by the story and they were so eager to come and visit this holy land and walk in the same places that Jesus walked in. At the ending worship we had a kind of Palestinian communion with pita bread and tea which are the usual type of bread and drink to us and I said the institution words in Arabic! It was the first time I ever do such a thing since we are not used to the idea of the involvement of females with church in general. It was actually a great feeling! Also, I had my first Tie Dye t-shirt and I swam and paddled in that gorges lake.
I am overwhelmed by this camp’s hospitality, generosity and love! The staff and the director were really awesome people! I love you Alabama!
