Fireflies

   Every time I see fireflies outside at night blinking around the yard, I think of when I was a little girl. As the world outside would settle into dusk, I would play out in the yard with my father. I would say, "Daddy, Daddy, can we catch the fireflies?" Over and over again, I would repeat that phrase as my father looked on smiling.  Finally, he would respond to my request by standing up and going inside. For a moment, I would be alone outside wondering if his return to the house meant it was time to go inside. Then, just at the moment I would move to go inside, the screen door would open and my father would walk to me with a glass jar and metal lid, a random jar headed for recycling. 

   Together, we would go to the shed, take out his hammer and a nail, punch holes into the lid. He'd put the lid back on to the jar and hand it to me saying, "Here you go, Punk. Let's go catch fireflies." I would run around the backyard barefoot catching fireflies and putting them into the jar until it was full of floating, blinking lights. I would sit for what felt like hours and just watching the fireflies fly around with their lights blinking on and off in persistent patterns. The next words my father would speak, always came too soon.  He would smile at me and say, "Alright Punk, it's time to let them go." I would plead with him, asking to just watch them a little bit longer. He would always respond in the same way, "If you watch them even a little longer, they might not get enough air, their lights would fade, and they would die. If they die, their lights are gone forever." Reluctantly, I would let the fireflies go and watch them, in their freedom, take off across the yard. It would always finish with me smiling again hand-in-hand with my dad watching the blinking lights.

   It is with similar feelings tonight that I reflect on three incredible weeks of camp. Each camp was different, in that there were different responsibilities and leadership roles on my part and different age groups. Kids camp. Middle school camp. High school camp. Throughout each of those camps, students' lives have changed because they had the opportunity to encounter Jesus Christ.  Each of those students have different lives they have returned to, with different gifts, hopes, and dreams. Just as, each one encountered Jesus Christ in different ways. Some encountered Him for the first time and now know Him as Savior and others were filled with the knowledge, direction, and calling they are to pursue in their life. Each student who encountered Jesus has been filled with light; a light that shines and blinks and calls others to them that they may encounter Jesus as well. 

   I love camp and there are days when I wish that camp would never end, just as I know there are countless other staff and students that wish the same. Camp is an amazing place where everyone is in community; life is done together. This includes everything from meals, to chapel, to free time, every moment is in community, the community of believers. In that community it becomes easy imagine how people lived during the time of the early church. In our contemporary culture, the goal is to live our lives apart from one another. Separation that occurs based on occupation, beliefs, goals, income, material wealth, and other social constructs.  There needs to be a shift from living in a community or neighborhood to living IN community with one another. As camp ends and students have to adjust from doing life twenty-four hours a day with their cabin-mates and leaders to their life separate from that community, it is difficult to remove the lid. The students become like the fireflies that I caught as a child, filled with light and purpose.

   Then, the lid pops off and these students are released into the world as bearers of light.  These students have the potential to take wing and fly, and by doing so, change the course of a generation. This in turn could change the course of a world, a world in need of God. So as much as my heart aches to return to the camp community with leaders from around the country and those incredible students, I stop because I hear my heavenly father telling me that these lights must be free to go where they were called to go and shine the light that they have been filled with that all may see and be changed as they have.

Fireflies...