After, Before, and In-between - Camp Week 9?

It is transition week 1.  The week after camp. 
Withdrawal.
Because the laughter and screams of little kids is like a drug.
Haven't you noticed?
It isn't the coffee that wakes you up.
It is the kids.
We've been zombies the last few weeks until they pull us out of it. 
Back to the reality of life in all of it's color, sound and camp chaos.
There is no other way to state it. 
I am in withdrawal.
I miss camp.
I miss the kids. I miss the staff. I miss the schedules and bandaids and meltdowns and worship songs belted out by a hundred little voices.

Humans aren't great at transitions. 
It's a fact.
These are places of struggle for most of us.
Some of you are headed back to high school.
The new year looms ahead.
You wonder about teachers and classmates, about friendships and dramas that have yet to unfold.
Some of you are headed back to college.
There are bags to pack, forms to fill out, goodbyes to be said - some for the first time, others knowing that there are friends waiting on campus.
Some are headed back to work.
That can be keeping a household going or school-year jobs or both.
Others have uncertain paths ahead.
Nothing is yet clear and waiting is part of the challenge.

I don't like transition, or waiting, or the busy of getting ready. I don't care much for Camp Week 9 at all. And when I find myself struggling here I try to go back to a place of comfort. Believe it or not - that's the Bible stories we started telling our little ones this summer. I say "started tell" because there are limits to what you can communicate with 10 minute attention spans and wiggly arms and legs.  Limits are also imposed by keeping things age appropriate for pre-schoolers. 

But I don't have those limits in Week 9 with those of you reading here. And I find comfort in a God who sees us as we are: broken, uncertain, fatigued, sometimes listless, but cares about us anyways. There is a lot more to some of the stories we tell. There is the before and after - the events that frame some of these well-loved stories, and the in between places where we look at a few sentences written in scripture and flesh that out with our imagination.

For example:
We often tell the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. It's exciting and dramatic. Sometimes we even tell about the rain coming afterwards and Elijah racing Ahab down the mountain afterwards. Elijah was on foot, Ahab was in his chariot. He shouldn't have won, but God was into taking Ahab down a few pegs repeatedly that day. Talk about a story involving "arch-enemies." You can practically see the raindrops sizzling as they came off the king when that "rag-tag prophet" pulled ahead of him on foot. Sometimes we tell that part of the story. When we have time. But not often do we talk about what came next.

The low point after the high.
In one day Elijah had been in the center of God showing his nation that he was truly in control. And that nation responded. They put the prophets of Baal to death. They made a clear statement about who they were going to follow and they did so right in front of a wayward king. It took courage, but they had seen that God was big. Bigger than Ahab and bigger than Jezebel. And Elijah was the lynch pin in that story. The man willing to stand up to Ahab and Jezebel before God worked his miracles. A man who had repeatedly told Ahab what God had in store if he didn't turn things around. A man that Ahab had unsuccessfully hunted throughout the land until this final showdown. Mt. Carmel was a high point in so many ways. The climactic finale on an epic national scale.

And Elijah was spent afterwards. Emotionally the fears crept in. Jezebel sent word that she would strike him down, and after all, she was the one to fear, not Ahab. He was tired both physically and mentally. He ran. He left his servant. He crept under a juniper tree. He asked God for death. He was alone and tired and at the end of his being. (1 Kings 19)

That is a story of after. After the high places. A story of transition. A story of inner struggle. The Bible doesn't tell us about what Elijah was feeling. But we can recognize the signs of distress, despair, discouragement. Today we'd put a label of depression on it. Elijah was struggling with the "after." He wanted to die. That is the "after" in this story.

And in that low place, God came to him. He sent an angel and gave Elijah food and rest. Respite, time away. And then he sent his voice to Elijah. God is in the low places friends. It doesn't erase the struggle. It doesn't magically transport us out from under the juniper tree. Instead he meets us there. And he knows what we need when we are fragile. (Never underestimate the power of a good nap and comfort food.) 

After God talks to Elijah in a still small voice we see the story continuing. God gives Elijah a protege in the form of Elisha. At some point a school is started for men interested in prophecy. And beyond that Elijah becomes one of two men in history to be taken to heaven without dying. His story moves onward after Mt. Carmel. After that deep valley. But God met Elijah there.

For me, this story is full of encouragement. Because God doesn't give us heroes who are unreal. They struggled. Incredible, difficult trips to the edge of themselves. Low places. And God cared about them there. It gives me the hope that he is in my low places too. It gives me the hope that experiencing those low places is not dishonorable. It is normal. And we have a God who understands that. 

It means that I am giving myself some space in the coming week to retreat. To listen for the still voice of God. To sleep and eat. To struggle. And eventually to find my path again with God's help.

Another example of the before's and afters that get glossed over: we talked about Joshua leading the nation of Israel over the Jordan river and around the walls of Jericho. Jericho that mighty walled city. It is a high point too in our stories. But we almost never tell the before to that story. Oh we'll talk about Joshua meeting the angel - the commander of the armies of the Lord. But not about what happened directly before that.

In chapter 3 Joshua has the priests cross into the Jordan River and God dries it up for the entire nation to cross during flood season. In Joshua 4, he instructs the men to make a monument to remember the miracle by taking large stones from the riverbed and setting them up on shore. And in chapter 5 God tells Joshua to circumcise the men. OK there is a reason that we don't tell this story to kids. You see circumcision was a Jewish practice that fell out of practice during the wilderness years. And now God commands that his nation stop and follow this again. 

It doesn't seem too weird until you think about the context. Joshua was not leading a pleasant country walk. He was coming into a land to conquer it. He was a military man. He understood tactics and strategies. He understood what crossing the river meant. The river was as formidable of a defense as the walls of Jericho in flood season. Broaching it was a first step towards the fighting to come. It was landing on Normandy Beach. And just after they cross, God tells his people to take every soldier, every grown male and have them undergo a surgery that will incapacitate them for several days.

The Bible is silent on some things. It doesn't tell us what Joshua thought. It doesn't tell of the long talks he had with his wife in their tent. About why God would ask this or how in the world to present this new order to his leaders in a way that would gather compliance. It doesn't talk about fears he must have had in replacing Moses, a very different and powerful leader. Or whether he wondered each time if this was the place where the people would say "enough of this craziness!" If they would think that Joshua, their military leader was making such an obvious military mistake, leaving them all exposed and vulnerable when he could have asked this on the other side of the river. That is all left to my imagination. But Joshua was human. I imagine he struggled some. I imagine the people struggled some.

But he went forward and the nation went with him. They did as God asked and then in the middle of a potential battlefield they stopped and celebrated Passover. And I wonder.
I wonder if this was one more step in a series of steps where God increased the faith of his people. It started out small, step into the River. Then this surgery and celebration, then the walking around Jericho. None of it made sense. 

And I wonder, if the sheer nonsensicalness of it did wonders. I'd like to think that the Old Testament God who commanded war and conquering, used this. Many of the people of Jericho fled. God sent wasps ahead of the Israelites and he sent this formidable view of an Army whose God dried up the Jordan, an Army so completely sure of themselves that they could take the time to party in a war zone. A people so committed to doing what their God said and a God so powerful that fear washed over the oncoming cities. I'd like to think that God cared about the inhabitants of the land enough to scare them away, just as he cared enough about the Egyptians to show them his power in the plagues. 

But Joshua didn't have that perspective. He couldn't have seen what was coming. The miracles to come, the warpath so different than what he could have imagined. Because God works differently than we do. He was still in the "before" place. Before Jericho. Before a long life leading the nation as they settled this land that God led them to take over.

When I land in a place where I can't see the path ahead, or when what God wants me to do doesn't seem to make sense. I come back to the story of Joshua after the Jordan and before Jericho. I look at the trust. I look at the way God built that trust. And I can hope. I can hope that my own trust will grow. Uncertain times are not new. It is a part of the human life. 

In the end, the "afters" can turn into the "before's," and make up a part of the in-betweens that become our lives. But I know it can be hard to see that. We don't get that perspective in our own lives. But God gives us the glimpse in the lives of others, so that we can see. He is there all the time.

When things are upside down and inside out, he is there.
When we think we walk a path alone, he is there.
When we are at the end of ourselves and lower than we thought possible, he is there.
Before the battles, he is there.
In the times of recovery, he is there.
In the times of celebration, he is there.
When things don't make sense, he is there.
In the big epic works of a nation, he is there.
In the little things that a single one of us struggle with, he is there.

My friends, In Week 9, he is there.
All of my wishes and prayers that each one of you can experience his voice and direction and comfort in this time.