Time Flies

Ok, so it has been a looong time since I last posted on the blog. With VBS, the Peacemaker Conference, Camp starting up, and life in general, I got seriously sidetracked and just haven't kept up with the blog. It is not a matter of simply being busy, it is being off a schedule and routine where I took the time to post. I am now catching the very end of July so that I at least have one post this month!

So, to the picture above. First, I was actually having a good time when the picture was snapped, I was just trying to give a good pose and it worked! The four young adults pictured with me are the four counselors at Berea this summer. They are great people who love Jesus, and love the teens. The girls are daughters to me and the boys are very much like sons to me.

It is this fact that leads me to this post.  This summer marks my 23rd summer on staff at Berea.  It is my 14th as Director.  When I started at Camp, I was a young 19 year old just finished with my first year of Bible college.  Now the counselors are still young people of college age but the 19 year old is now a 41 year old and looked on as a father figure.  How did that happen so fast?!?

Now, lest you think that I am complaining or bemoaning my passed youth, let me clarify.  I am VERY thankful for where I am today.  The Lord in His faithfulness has taken that young man who was so full of insecurity and doubt, and taught him, trained him, refined him, and matured him.  Now I still have a LONG way to go, but I am thankful that God has seen fit to now allow me to be a father figure and mentor to these young men and women.  In the case of the four pictured there, I have watched them grow up from young teens (or younger) into the fine men and women that they are today.  No longer campers, they now have the maturity and spiritual wherewithal to be counselors.  They too, like me, have a long way to go, but I am so blessed that God has seen fit to use me in some small ways to encourage and teach them as they grow in Him.

I have wanted a big family.  So far God has seen fit to bless Sarah and I with only three biological children.  Yet with each passing year, I seem to collect more sons and daughters who could use a dad, or another dad, to teach and guide them in their walk with Christ.    This is no reflection of my greatness.  It is testimony to the wonderful and awesome power of God which can take a poor, insecure, strange young man and make him a father figure to many.  To God be the glory.  This "clay pot" is thankful that he is useful and excited to discover anew each week God's exciting command to "Make Disciples!"