Camping is pretty great. Much of it depends on who you are with, what you are eating, the weather and of course the scenery. You could never compare prairie camping with mountain camping or being attacked by mosquitos to watching a moose walk through your camp ground. We all have our good stories where we feel like we conquered nature, and we all have the stories where camping got cut short and was replaced by a hotel and crying children. Either way camping is universal, it is a common ground with some fairly common rules. One of those rules is to accept no new rules. For many, we will throw out the rules from everyday ordinary life along with the social norms that confine us on a daily basis. We will go several days without a shower (I do not do this… I have my pride), we slowly curb our anti snacking lives until all we do is eat potato chips and wagon wheels, while trying to justify it as a meal. It often doesn’t hit you on how far you have slipped, until you start driving home. On the way back to civilization you now realize things like… I haven’t had a vegetable in a week, I smell like wild game or the only restaurant I can currently go into is either McDonalds or Humpty’s… and even that is a stretch. But it is summer time! We let things relax during the summer, life seems to take a camping trip because we know that in September we are going to be slapped with a cold dose or reality.
How about our spirituality. This summer how have your disciplines held up? Why bring that into summer? If we don’t bring our spiritual disciplines with us into the summer then they are no longer disciplines, they are just good ideas, or nice Jesus memories. So for those out there in reading things land who have let your Jesus stuff go camping, this is a great time to take a shower and eat an apple (figuratively speaking of course). Let’s pray, encourage, worship, give, and read our way into September being ready for what God wants to do. Do not forget about 2 Timothy 4, be ready in season and out.
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