Finding God: Reflections from a Camp Counselor

This summer, I met Dios.

From late May to mid-July, I served as the Assistant Director of a nonprofit Christian camp called Passport Missions. Comprised of 15 undergraduate and seminary students from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Ghana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama, our team spent the summer traveling across the southeast and hosting camps in five different states.

Each week, we led activities and worship for hundreds of campers and adults. We grew closer as a staff. We partnered with organizations around our host communities. And most of all, we leaned into our camp theme, "Wide Open Spaces," creating spaces of Welcome, Wonder, Act, and Dance.

Of all my years working camp, this summer was by far the most transformative and surprising. And I'll be honest... after three years, I wasn't exactly expecting any big "spiritual awakenings."

Of course, summer camp is always meaningful. But I'd made the lifelong friends, right? I'd had the God-moments. I'd even finished my grad school essays—there was no need to wait a few months. Camp was same old, same old.

Except... it wasn't, and God (thank God) doesn't work like that.

My God is so BIG!

Each day of camp, I was humbled (and I mean it!). I missed details. Humbling. I made mistakes. Humbling. I did a TikTok dance on stage. Humbling. But most importantly, as I built relationships with people from different backgrounds—who knew God, not as God, but as Father, Mother, Dios, Onyame, and Chúa—I had to take a long look in the mirror and ask myself how I might be putting Jesus, God, and my faith into a box... Humbling.

As a camper, camp had always helped me feel big. I was incredibly shy as a kid, but at camp, I could take up space. I read scripture in worship (out loud!), participated in the Variety Show, and even asked questions in Bible study. In those five days of camp each year, I could feel big.

But this year, camp helped me feel small again.

Our team was from all over the world. We constantly prayed in two, three, and even four languages. We learned dances from our different cultures. We talked about our favorite foods, holidays, and traditions. We even shared about our different worship styles and religious practices.

Week by week, 14 ministers introduced me to a new understanding of God, Jesus, and our world—one that was so much bigger than I'd imagined. And week by week, I found myself wondering... Do I really know God at all? Do any of us? What does "finding God" even mean?

Finding God

We use that kind of language a lot, you know? We "find God" on a hike. At camp. On a retreat. We "find Jesus" in a friend. A cup of coffee. A sunset.

But sometimes, when we "find God" and "find Jesus," we aren't really finding either of them. Instead, we're "finding" the god we've made into our own image. A god who talks like us, grew up like us, behaves like us, looks like us.

Our god uses the sidewalk, not a Roman road or dirt path. Our god sings out of a hymnal, not from memorized Hebrew Psalms. Our god sits in a chair. He doesn't lie down on his side. Our god is Baptist. Methodist. Presbyterian. Nondenominational. American.

And even when we say he's not, this is our god. Because we all, whether we realize it or not, view life through a cultural lens.

We see through a water so clear, it's hard to recognize. And while Jesus knows us to our core, I can't help but wonder if he's smiling down at us, shaking his head, and saying, "My child, you've got it all wrong."

"The only gods we can know everything about are the gods we make ourselves." —Edmond L Rowell Jr., Finding God in the Rest of the Story

Wide Open Space

This summer, I walked into camp confident in my perception of God, and even if I talked a big game of "mystery" and "inclusion" and "keeping an open mind," deep down, my faith still lived (and lives) within the confinement of my American, Christian, progressive, middle-class, Southern, White experience.

If I'm not careful, my Jesus and God will live in and even embody that space too.

...

Every day for two months, my coworkers introduced me to God by a different name. To Jesus by a different—and more authentic—culture. And as we led children to be the hands and feet of Jesus... As we worshiped in English and Spanish... As we created wide open spaces... I found that the vastness of God took my breath away. And this is what I learned:

We will never "find God"—not fully, anyway. But we will find a lot more of God when we look outside of our bubbles. When we look for our cultural lenses and reject our biases. When we listen to other people's diverse, lived experiences. When we humble ourselves. When we talk to a follower of Jesus from across the world. When we remember that Jesus had a culture so unlike our own. And when we remember that God made the whole world, and God is moving in every single part of it.

Because God made the whole world and is moving in every single part of it.

Advent People, I know very little about very few things, but I am beginning to understand this: The world is a wide open space, loved by a big God and a humble carpenter.

In our search for God, may we remember just how big this world, God, and carpenter are. And may we remember that there is so much more for us to learn.

...

“And I’ll stride freely through wide open spaces as I look for Your truth and wisdom” -Psalm 119:45

"Wisdom is knowing how little we know" —Socrates