New School Year : New Ministry

My Friends,

As many of you know (and those who don't soon will), the beginning of this new school year brings a season of change for Heather and me. If you know us, then you know that this is something that we are actually quite used to. In fact, I have come to learn that change is one of the few constant things about life, and as such is to be embraced and not something to hide from, it will always find you.

I spent this last year serving with Cru, a ministry to college students on college campuses across the world. I served primarily at The University of California; San Diego, but made regular appearances at San Diego State University as well and on occasion could be found at Mesa College, one of our local community colleges. Serving with Cru was a great experience. I was a part of a great team and was able to settle use my gifts in a way that I had not yet felt the freedom to use them. Yet in the past couple of months, the winds of change have begun to blow.

One of my best friends from college had been working for Young Life, Christian missions organization with an emphasis on camp ministry, for the last five or so years and had begun to see the need for college ministry to be happening in East San Diego County (or East County as we like to call it). So when he and I got together one day, we began to dream of what a college ministry could look like in an area that is often overlooked, but prime for ministry to thrive.

Our dreaming has lead to me accepting a new position in East County, and I am excited to say that this Fall, I will be starting to serve with Young Life, bringing Young Life College to campuses that have had very little interaction with the Gospel.

It will be my focus and task to establish Young Life on these three campuses and see college students from various backgrounds and with various goals reached for Christ, and sent to reach others.

In the scope of my vision:

• I see college students from East County presented with the truth of Christ and giving their lives to it.
• I see college students excited about giving their summers to serve at one of Young Life's many camps across the country.
• I see college men and women seeing the need to invest their lives for the sake of others and giving of their time to mentor local high school kids.
• I see a legacy being born in East County where college kids are eager and expectant to see God move in their lives and to feel driven to give back. 

San Diego County is a young and vibrant area of our country, and the students that come out of our colleges and universities are well prepared to not only impact the lives of the people immediately around them, but often go on and make a positive impact in the world around them.

This is a good change for Heather and me, and I believe that this is going to be a good change for East County San Diego. 

Thanks for believing in the work that we do!

With Gratitude,

Scott McGhee

Young Life College Coordinator

East County, San Diego

P.S. If you would like to be a part of seeing our ministry to college students in East County take off, please consider giving to our efforts. I am looking to raise $2400 in new monthly support as I get started with this new ministry.

Go to giving.younglife.org 

Click the button that says staff member’s name and enter McGhee into the box when prompted. 

Select the my name from the list

Fill out the form for you gift and follow the instructions.

Once you get to the “Gift Summary” page, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the “Complete Transaction” button.

Dream Freezer

I really enjoy cooking. This might be a little known fact about me, but I really do enjoy whipping up a delicious meal in the kitchen. I'm pretty good at it too, but I am biased as I usually cook food that I really enjoy. This leaves pretty slim odds for me not liking whatever is for dinner, because I know exactly how I like things to be cooked...

I also like to experiment with foods and making things that I have not had the chance to cook before, so about 9 months ago, I decided I wanted to roast a chicken. "How hard could it be?" I thought. Answer, actually not too difficult. So one night when we had a friend of my wife's staying with for a couple of days, I decided to give it a go. 

Not to come across as arrogant, but I had made a very delicious chicken. If my memory suites me, (which this might just be how I want to remember things) the three of us ate the entire chicken and when all was said and done, we were left with only a chicken carcass sitting on the cutting board. 

Now if you have spent some quality time with me, you will know that I am a dreamer. So when I saw that chicken carcass sitting on the cutting board, I really only had one thought... I was going to make chicken stock...from scratch.

Did I have any idea how to do this? No, but that did not matter to me because I had a perfectly good chicken carcass sitting on my cutting board and a head full of dreams. It was perfect. On the other hand I did just eat a lot of chicken, or maybe I was just "chickening out," (ha!), but I decided that this dream of mine wouldn't explode if I deferred it a bit. So I took that chicken carcass, shoved it into a storage container, and put it in the back of the freezer.

Last night, while Heather was out having hot chocolate with her mentor, I made a run to Costco to pick up some of the essentials you need for life.

You know what I'm talking about:

• Toilet Paper
• Paper Towels
• Trash Bags
• Fruit Snacks
• Lasagna 
• Pot Stickers
• 8 Pounds of Popcorn

This was my actual list, and as you can see, I only got the things that were really, really essential.

When I got home, I went about putting things away and found a home for everything, but our freezer was a bit full so I decided to reorganize things a bit. Much to my chagrin, there in the back of the freezer was the chicken carcass that I had stuck there 9 months earlier.

Yes, I had kept a frozen chicken carcass in the back of our freezer for 9 months.

Now, I had seen this particular container many times since then, and would usually think to myself, "I wonder what is in there..." But this time, it hit me. 

There is a dead animal in there. 

In that container, there is a dead animal that I had put there to eventually be made into a delicious soup. A dead animal that was now so freezer burned, it was barely recognizable, and made me feel more and more disgusted the more I thought about it.

The time had come. It had to go. That 9 month old chicken carcass made its way all the way from our freezer, into our trashcan, and out to the dumpster behind our apartment, never to be seen again.

Most dreams need to be pursued, but some of them, especially the really bad ones, need to be extracted from the far reaches of your freezer and taken out with the trash.

And lets be real, if your dream is to make chicken stock from a chicken carcass, you need to get a better dream. 

If you can defer your dream for 9 whole months and not give two thoughts to it, you probably need to get a better dream.

God did not create us to be people who float through our lives, never looking to either side. God created us to see the turmoil the world has found itself in and do our part to restore it to the way that it was originally intended to be. 

I don't want to dream of making chicken stock anymore. I would rather dream of impacting the lives of the people around my through my writing. I want to dream of passing on the things that I have learned to future generations. I want to have dreams that are looking to the betterment of the world around me, and not just the betterment of the food inside me.

I want to have dreams that are worth pursuing now even if that means slow progress toward them over a long period of time. I want to have dreams that are worth not shoving in a freezer for 9 months, but if for some reason they have to be, I hope that they will have been strong enough and noble enough to not be repulsive when they come back out on the other side. 

What do you want to dream about?

Courage and Cowardice

We live in a world filled with fear. Fear is all around us.

Courage is what exists in us when we embrace our fears. Sometimes this means that we embrace them and just sit with them for a while, doing our best to understand them. Other times it means embracing them while moving forward in spite of them. Fear is not a bad thing, rather it is necessary because where there is no fear, there is no courage. I am not afraid of breakfast cereal, so for me to wake up in the morning and pour myself a bowl of Cheerio's is not a courageous act. It is, rather, painfully normal. Adversely, I am quite afraid of heights. I hate them, so for me, a quiet, docile person who loves to have my feet on the ground and away from high ledges, to go skydiving for example would take an incredible amount of courage. In fact, it takes an incredible amount of courage to even sit with the idea that I am afraid of heights, and then more still to walk toward the landing at the top of the stairs that overlooks the living room. For an adrenaline junkie, walking toward this ledge takes no courage at all, for them it would be like me eating Cheerio's, not an act of courage, but an act of painful normalcy. 

Cowardice on the other hand should not be defined as giving into fear, as much culture would have us believe, but rather cowardice is rejecting the idea that we are afraid and labeling the things that we are afraid of as bad, wrong, or evil. It is taking an active stance, that something we don't understand should not be tolerated. Cowardice takes fear and turns it into prejudice. If I were to take my fear of heights and then decide that anyone who goes skydiving, or cliff jumping, or walks toward the edge of the landing is foolish for doing so, then I have let my fear turn into prejudice and act the part of the coward. If I look at another person and decide that they are worth less than I am because I don't understand what it is like to be in their shoes, I act the part of the coward. 

Cowardice often masquerades as courage, but in reality it is nothing but a cheap facsimile. Yet this is just where our culture often lands. When we don't understand something, instead of embracing the fear of the unknown, we label it as bad, wrong, and evil. We cowardly choose to build walls around us that we believe will keep us safe from everything outside,  but in reality, only separate from one another and from ourselves. Most often this manifests through the means of things like religious legalism, political absolutism, and racism. 

Here we begin to neglect the grays areas of life, let alone the reds, oranges, greens, blues and purples. We do our best to build a monochromatic worldview and to get everyone around us to subscribe to the same shade that we have chosen to color with. 

We call this "safe." 

Yet, it is in this place where we have truly let cowardice define our lives, and thus where we are really most vulnerable for when we reject our fear and the things that we are afraid of, our cowardice leaves us isolated and alone.

Like the people in Plato's cave, we are spiteful, hateful even toward those that tell us that the world outside of our walls is actually filled with beautiful light and color (or colour maybe). We choose then to fight tooth and nail to stay within the confines of the prisons we have built for ourselves rather than explore the beauty of the real world around us because we have built this false notion of safety.

Yet God did not mold us to live in the obscurity of darkness, but rather to venture out and experience the fullness of his marvelous light. This means choosing courage over cowardice. This means facing the things that are painful and difficult in our lives. This means occasionally risking comfort and perceived (but potentially false) safety, in order to experience the beauty and the wholeness that God truly desires for us.

The Finish Line

Dear Friends, Family, and Supporters,

I am very excited to say that my support raising process has been going very well. It has been an incredible journey these past few months as Heather and I have witnessed God's amazing provision and unmatched faithfulness. It began with a number handed to me by Cru and I was told that I needed to have it all raised by this certain deadline otherwise they would need to rethink my role with Cru this next year. Needless to say, I was stressed, very, very stressed (Heather didn't seem to be as stressed as I was). Yet little by little, the support began to come in. Sometimes it would be in small amounts, $5/month here, $10/month there, and sometimes in gifts of $100/month or more. Whatever the size though, each of these gifts have added up to bring me dangerously close to the finish line. With only seven days left to reach my goal, God brought in the majority of the funds I need to get on campus. This finish line is in sight! We could not be more thankful for all of you who have already joined our support team! Thank you so much for bringing me this far on this incredible journey! Heather and I are so looking forward to the work that God is going to do in and through us in this upcoming season and you have all helped to make it possible.

Though the finish line is close, the time to really celebrate is not yet here. We still need a few more people to join our team and to join us in the work that God is going to be doing on campus at SDSU and UCSD this year. I believe that God has incredible things in store, but there is still a small gap that needs to be bridged before I can help participate in it.

For those of you who have joined our team, would you consider inviting three people you know who have a passion for college ministry to read my previous post and consider partnering with us as well?

If you have not yet joined our team please consider doing so! The work of God is worth the investment, no matter how small.

Looking toward the finish line and the future. Come journey with me

Thank you all so much for your prayers and your financial giving! You are making incredible things happen for the Kingdom of God.

--Scott McGhee

P.S. Here is the link to give online: give.cru.org/0863779

New Journeys

Friends,

I have begun a new journey. To be honest, it is one that I never thought I would take. I've known for a while now that ministry is where I want to go, and even college ministry where I desired to find myself, but I honestly did not expect God to invite me into doing ministry with Cru (the United States ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ). Yet here I am at the beginning on a brand new journey trusting that God knows what he is doing.

Do you remember being in college? What is the one thing that comes to mind when you pause and reflect on your college experience? Some common images might be your friends, days lazily spent down at the beach playing volleyball, all night study sessions in random study rooms on campus, or the terrible food in the dining hall. Whatever it is that comes to mind when you stop and reflect on your college experience, most of us are able to stop and reflect on those times with a full sense of nostalgia.

Yet for most of us, college is the first time we have really ever been out on our own. We lived with our parents for the 18 years before we enrolled in school, so our college experiences are also marked with a new sense of freedom that we have not been able to experience before. I was fortunate enough to attend a public university (UCSD, Go Tritons!), and for the first time in my life did not have any rules to follow like I did living at home. There was no curfew, it did not matter how long I stayed out, I could get in a friend's car and head to Mexico and there was no one to stop me or tell me that it might not be a good idea.

When you give it some thought, it seems silly that when we turn 18 we are just released into the world with only very little life experience to guide us!

For those of us that came into college with a background of faith, it may have been one of the first times that the validity of our faith was actually challenged, and challenged by people in authority. I can remember many professors at UCSD who would blatantly mock the Christian faith and ridicule those who would hold Christian viewpoints in their classes. In fact, I was told recently about a professor at the University of Texas who told his students, "While you are in this class, you will be expected to be an Agnostic or Atheist. Anyone with sincere religious beliefs will be expected to take of his religious hat." For a young college student experiencing this new found freedom for the first time, even a student with a strong Christian background, this type of statement can be confusing and damaging to their faith, especially if they do not have a community of believers to process these challenges with.

I was fortunate that one of my older sisters had made the long trek from Sacramento to San Diego already so I had someone to show me the ropes of college. She helped me get plugged in with a good church, which I've ended up working for in some capacity for the last six years. She was involved Cru (the United States ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ) on campus and she helped me get plugged in there. I did not have to feel fully lost and alone in the world when I moved to San Diego for school because I had someone to walk along side of me and help me get my feet planted on the ground before the craziness of college really kicked in. 

Most people I met at UCSD did not know anyone else when they moved into the dorms. They were all alone at a school of over 30,000 students, and if you take that experience to be more normative than mine was, that would mean that in San Diego alone, there are over 150,000 college students experiencing a new found freedom at one of the city's colleges and universities, with no one to help them through the process except for people who have also yet to figure out their new found freedom. In 2013, nation wide, there was nearly 17.5 million college students in the country, most of whom do not know what it is like to live away from the structure of the family they came from. We end up being left with a culture of confused college kids, attempting to show the younger confused college kids how to be a confused college kid. It is a classic image of the blind leading the blind.

This does not need to be the case.

I have recently been invited to work with an organization called Cru (the United States ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ) on the two major college campuses in San Diego, San Diego State University (SDSU), and the University of California; San Diego (UCSD). I will be working with these college students who are trying to figure out their new found freedom in life, and guiding them toward making clear and healthy decisions. I will be mentoring them, discipling them, and showing them how to be in college and still keep their faith.

There is a huge need for people to be on campus walking along side of these students during are four (or more) of the most formative years of their lives. I have chosen to respond to the invitation that God has presented me with; to take the step of faith to begin working on campus with these students and to be a consistent presence in their lives helping to show them who Christ is and how he wants to work in and through them during their time in college and beyond.

I am looking to develop a team of ministry partners who share my vision for reaching college students for the Kingdom of God and are willing to partner with me by giving financially to my ministry on a consistent, monthly basis, and who will be committed to praying for my ministry and the work that God has invited me to do.

If you or anyone you know would be interested in hearing more about my ministry with Cru or would like to become a financial or prayer partner, feel free to shoot me an email using the address on my complete profile, or click here to go to my Cru online profile.

Also, if you know of anyone who might be interested in hearing more about my work with Cru, please connect them with me! Direct them to this blog post or pass them my contact info from my complete profile!

Startling

It struck me last night in the life group that I lead that true humble service is startling to the people being served. When you look at Peter's reaction when Jesus goes to wash his feet, he is startled and tries to resist it. Even now, in our own culture, we often find it startling when someone tries to pay us a compliment because we don't feel like we deserve their praise or appreciation. Yet on the flip side of that, it feels strange when we offer someone a compliment only to have it shot down or deflected by the person we want to receive our affirmation. 

What would it look like for us to begin to be startling people. People who catch others off guard by the sheer fact that we actually want to do things for them and serve them in humble ways.

How can we go about doing that? 

What are your thoughts?

Nostalgia

I've been listening to a lot of Third Eye Blind today. A bit of a throwback, but if you know me, you may well know of my obsession with 90's music. There are few things in life that have the power to draw out of the depths of our mind memories from earlier times. For me, Third Eye Blind happens to be a band that induces great nostalgia. I think back to the times I first heard their music on the radio and how I had no idea what they were singing about (probably a good thing). Then again in college when I rediscovered them after randomly seeing them live before taking off to Mexico for the weekend. I remember many times listening to "Motorcycle Drive By" on repeat with Andrew as loud as we would dare while screaming along with it as we drove down the freeway.

Sometimes I need a little nostalgia in my life. It gives me hope that even in the midst of busyness and a chaotic schedule, there are things that are happening today that I will be able to reflect on in a few years with fond memories.

A Quick Note about Coffee

I am a people watcher. I love watching people interact while going about their daily business and I have noticed that when done well people watching can teach you a lot about life. This morning I am sitting in a small cafe enjoying a rich cafe Americano  and observing the other people that walk in to order and enjoy their beverages. Yet the biggest thing I have noticed is the way in which coffee has a way to bring people together.

Old,
young,
infant,
tattooed,
pierced,
moms,
wealthy,
students,
hungry,
strong,
weak,
hip,
square,
oblivious,
everyone.

They are all here and they are all ordering their coffee and tea and sitting down together and separately to enjoy what they have chosen to satisfy their individual cravings.

There is a lot we can learn here about God and how we relate to him in community. There are no barriers here, there are just people loved by God, whether or not they realize it. Who knew that a cup of coffee could teach so much.

Activate

            I’ve always been pretty good with directions. There was a time when I got very lost in a sketchy area of Sacramento following my high school’s senior prom, but my date and the other couple with us seemed to enjoy the adventure of it all and things worked themselves out, but other than that one time, I cannot recall if I have ever been so lost that I did not know how to find my way out. My mom will tell you stories of how when I was a very little version of me, I would disappear in department stores only to be found hiding inside those round clothing racks presumably just playing a game, but as far as I can remember, I have a difficult time getting lost even when I try. That is up until these past couple of weeks.

            Recently I have felt lost. I have been lost underneath the pile of books that I always seem to have around me. If they are not stacked on the table I am sitting at, they are in the bags that I have been carrying around as I work through the mountain of school work I have each week. I have been lost underneath a mountain of theories, principles, theology, and vocabulary while the thoughts in my try painstakingly to move the mountain from on top of me onto the computer screen that I sit in front of even as I write this. Daunting is not good enough an adjective to describe the intellectual challenges I have stepped into, challenges which found me lost and not sure where I was, buried at the bottom of a mountain. Yet even there, a glimmer of hope fell across my eyes as I worked to dig myself out.

            Amid the whirlwind of textbooks and journal articles, there were many a time where I just needed to believe that there was more to life than just what I could find in a book or read about online. There had to be more to truth than vague and conflicting conceptions of what is real. There needed to be something tangible that I could hold onto. With my head spinning and my heart aching I stumbled across this quote by Ron Highfield:

“The Son of God did not become incarnate, die, and triumph over death to solve a theoretical dilemma.”

And just like that, I could see a tunnel of light leading me out from under the mountain.

            Highfield’s statement fell in the middle of a paper written to argue against another person’s theory, and there I was attempting to argue my own. Yet with arguments upon arguments he was still able to see that arguments without action are void. Let me say that again: arguments without action are void.

           

Jesus was a man of action.

 It seems to me that so much of the popular Christian culture lives in the realm of the theoretical, myself included. It is a wonderful thing, for example, to know and understand that we are all generally called to share the gospel with everybody, yet so often we decide that it is fine to keep this understanding to ourselves. We actively choose personal comfort over our greater responsibility of acting.

When Jesus was faced with the most difficult of situations, he still chose to act. Yet when I am faced with even the most simple of propositions, I choose passivity. I need Christ to activate my life in a way that my own selfish desires cannot. I need Christ to activate my potential to live out the dreams that he has placed into my heart. I need Christ to activate my will to choose to do what is good and what is right when everything else seems to be going entirely wrong. Arguments without action are void, but in order to act, we need Christ to activate us.

           

            

Brotherhood: Growing Up with Sisters

I grew up with two amazing sisters: Kendra the oldest, Richelle the middle child, and myself, Scott the youngest. So thinking about brotherhood is often a difficult topic for me. I didn’t have brothers. Brotherhood was something relatively absent from my childhood. My sisters are awesome and I love them, but the relationships I have observed between brothers are distinctly different than my relationships with my sisters. The way you connect with a brother is different, and this was something that I desperately wanted growing up.

My desire for a true brother didn’t stop with my childhood. I had a few close friends in high school who were brother like and one in particular, Justin, who I did almost everything with. My first tastes of brotherhood came from him. We were brutally honest with each other and at times we were really angry with each other, but we could fight it out and go on knowing that at the end of the day, we would still have each others backs. We would stay up really late talking about girls and practical jokes we planned on playing on people and occasionally we would talk about God and what he meant to us and how we saw him working in our lives. It really was a great friendship. Unfortunately we decided to go to college in very different parts of the country. He went to Michigan, I moved to San Diego. I clearly made the better choice, but he could not be convinced.

College brought about an entirely new set of issues with brotherhood. Early on in my college career, I joined a fraternity and one of the things I was most excited about was this concept of brotherhood that they all talk so much about. My dad was in a fraternity and told me that some of his best friends even still he met in his fraternity days, and on the surface, the Greek system talks a lot about brotherhood. The brotherhood I found there was not what I had hoped. Sure I would hang out with the guys at parties, or at “brotherhood” events, but what I saw was a bunch of really awesome people make decisions that ultimately drove them away from intimacy in the name of brotherhood. Brotherhood in the Greek system often looks like spending time together drinking and then going to do crazy things. It is based on a false intimacy that says since we are experiencing these things together we are brothers, but I quickly learned that this is not true. Jack and Judith Balswick say that “Intimacy can be defined as a mutual knowing and caring free of embarrassment or shame.” It means that your name is safe in the other person’s mouth. I would hear people claim to be brothers one minute then intentionally disrespect their so called brother the next. I would watch Cain kill Able then look God in the face and ask “Am I my brother’s keeper?” I learned very quickly that true brotherhood in the Greek system would be hard to come by.

It was then that I moved in with a group of guys who would teach me what real brotherhood looks like. At first there were four of us. Andrew, Jamin, Scott, and I and later on we would add in Kevin, Carson and Eugene. With these six other guys I have learned what it means to have brothers. We live together, we fight with each other we stay up late and talk about girls, but we also care deeply for each other. We are there to support each other through the good times and the bad. They are more than willing to call me out on my crap, and I try to do the same for them. In the past three years no one has made me as angry as these six guys have, and in the past three years, no one has brought me as much joy. We are honest with each other, brutally honest. We share our lives together. If something has happened in any of our lives, good or bad, the other guys we live with are among the first to know about it and we are able to come around each other in prayer and with grace in order to build each other up. These guys have become more than friends to me.

Proverbs 17:17 says that “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.”

There is a distinction here. A friend will always have your back, but a brother is someone that you struggle alongside of. You experience adversity together. There is more than just sympathy for a hard time, more than just kind words. A brother stands by you through thick and thin and marches into your battles with you, and carries you when you find the road ahead of you too difficult to keep going.

The story of David and Jonathan in the Bible is a beautiful picture of what Biblical brother hood actually is. Jonathan protected David from his enemies, even when David was the enemy of Jonathan’s father. We are given an image of these two men laughing together, crying together, and sharing an intimacy largely unknown in western culture. There bond was strong to the point that even after Jonathan had been killed in battle, and David had taken the throne from Jonathan’s father, David took it upon himself to care for Jonathan’s only remaining son, a man who was “crippled in both feet,” as if he was one of his own sons (2 Samuel 9). It is clear that though David and Jonathan were indeed examples of the Proverb. Even in the greatest adversities, and even in death, David was there to care for Jonathan, and Jonathan for David.

This is God’s desire for brotherhood: that we care for one another in a sacrificial manner; that we come along each other through the thick and thin and fight for each other in times of adversity.

Growing up with sisters was great. I have been shaped and formed into who I am partially because of their influence on me and I know that they will always be there to support me when I need it, but there is something undeniably good and distinctly different about living with the brothers that I have now. It is a special bond that cannot be manufactured artificially, and one that takes a lot of work to maintain, but when we do, I have experienced that it is more than worth the effort I’ve put in, and all of my relationships have been strengthened by it. You cannot lose. I honestly believe that it is something that God truly desires for us.

"Why" is a Hard Question!

I was presented with this question recently: “Why are you a Christian?” "Why" is a hard question, but by thinking back on the other times I have been asked this or similar questions I am able to stop and realize the power behind the answer. A high school kid asked me this question this summer and later on another one got my answer without having to ask. He needed to hear it. I needed to give it. It worked out well for the both of us. I am coming to recognize that answering and sharing why it is I believe in the God of the Bible is both a necessity for my spiritual life and can have a great impact on the lives of the people around me. We need to know why we believe. We need to know both for our own benefit and the benefit of the people around us. If we do not actually understand why it is we believe in Jesus, why we believe in the resurrected Christ, then I have to wonder how honest our belief actually is.

The last time I was asked to respond to this question, here is what I wrote out:

I am a Christian because God has transformed me. I will not pretend that life is sunshine and rainbows because its not. In fact, that is the exact opposite of reality. Life is hard. Sometimes life is really hard and we do not have what it takes to make it through. We just don’t. We cannot do life on our own. It takes help. Help from the people around us, and help from those closest to us. Sometimes it even takes the help of a stranger. But what happens when all of that fails and we still find ourselves weak and floundering inside of the cruel and bitter fishbowl we seem to live in? We turn outside of ourselves and we attach ourselves to the things that give us meaning. Relationships become our everything. Drugs take us outside of our problems. Alcohol takes the edge off. We give ourselves to images and place our hope in our big glowing boxes…the picture sure is clear though. In our brokenness, we try to live a life that is “good enough,” yet ultimately still, these things that we form unhealthy attachments to end up failing. She breaks up with you. You overdose. DUI maybe? We end up retreating further and farther inside of ourselves only to discover that our own narcissism, vanity, and self-absorption has led us to a place of utter ruin.

Enter Jesus.

Though we pretend and hope at times that he does not exist and that he has not seen any of this, he has. He has seen all of it. He knows what has gone on and his heart is broken for us. It is broken into pieces as small as the grains of sand on the shore. His heart is broken for us as much as we are broken. He sees this and has seen this and while we have found ourselves living in this mess, he has already extended his hand to us saying, “All of those things that failed you, everything that has let you down, they are nothing but rubbish. It is not in my character to let go of you. Take my hand and allow me to begin healing your wounds. I can help you to become who you were created to be, there is no other way.”

I am a Christian because Jesus found me at the bottom of a pit which I had dug for myself. I have sat at the apex of my own conceit, stubborn and refusing to move. I have stood, shovel in hand at the nadir of my own despair ready to keep digging. Still time and again I find when I have reached the end of myself, I look up and I see Jesus extending his hand to me, reminding me of his goodness, and his awesome power in my life. He has reached out his hand to me and I have said yes. I am a Christian because he has held true to his promise. He has transformed me. He is transforming me. He will continue to transform me. I am a Christian because Jesus is the only one capable of helping me to reach my fullest potential. He loves me that much. He loves us all that much.

It is by no means a perfect response. It is actually lacking in a lot of areas but I am confident that God uses even the most broken of people.  He uses the imperfect to highlight the perfect that is all around us; the subtle workings of God in our every day life. If you were to ask me again tomorrow just why I am a Christian, I would hope to give a similar response.

We can never really know who is listening, or how impactful something we might share with someone may be. The important thing is that we share it.

C.S. Lewis wrote in his essay “Is Theology Poetry” a statement that has stuck with me. It has helped to shape my own feelings and beliefs and I cannot deny the truth of his words. He wrote: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

This is just one more aspect of the larger story of our life. Yet it is a very important one. Why are you a Christian? Or if you are not one, what is keeping you from Christ? "Why" is a hard question, but the answer is more powerful than we recognize.

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.  – 1 Peter 3:15

Making Connections

It always amazes me how not alone we are. In contemporary society, with access to the internet, cell phones, iPads, etc., out world has become smaller in many ways. If I meet a person in class, in a coffee shop, or even on the street and we happen to strike up a conversation, it would not be surprising to get home later that day and have a friend request from them on Facebook. It really is amazing how simple communication has gotten. Take my Facebook friends for example. I have “friends” in Malawi, Uganda, Central Asia, Hungry, South Korea, and China among others in addition to the Untied States. Now granted I have been to many of these countries, and of the ones I have not been to, I know people currently living there. Some of the countries where I have Facebook friends though I have never been to in my life! Yet in my travels I have met people from these countries who have returned home and added me as their Facebook friend. We are connected, even if it is just through a series of signals and wires that ties us ultimately together. In fact, this blog is regularly checked by at least one person in Japan!

We live in an age where it only takes a day to get to the other side of the world and make new connections. I do not consider myself a well traveled person and yet there are only two continents that I have not been to. It really is mind boggling to think of the access we have to other cultures and other ways of thinking.

These are very tumultuous times. With political unrest all across Africa and the Middle East, the devastating earthquake and tsunami that recently crippled Northern Japan leaving them in a nuclear crisis, and oh yeah, the rest of the worlds problems it is a wonder that I still find time to complain about high gas prices. Here we are, living in a world that is so intimately connected in so many ways, yet more often than not, we choose to live as hermits, concerned with nothing but our own well being, pretending that we are alone. We act as though everyone else’s problems are unwelcome when in reality, everyone else’s problems should ultimately be ours as well.

Now I’m not saying we should all take on the burden of caring for every person who is going through a hard time, in that regard we need only care for those close to us or for whom we feel burdened to care for. What I am saying is this: Large scale evil happens in our world every day and as a people intimately, intrinsically, and easily connected to each other, we have a responsibility to address the evil that we see; the evil of hurting people in Japan; the evil of malaria in Africa; the evil of the devastation in Haiti; the evil of child sex trafficking all across the world.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. – Colossians 1:19-20

God is working to bring back and restore everything to the way it was originally intended to be. As the people of God we are responsible for working toward this reconciliation. In fact the apostle Paul tells us that Christ has given us the “ministry of reconciliation” (Romans 5:18), he has given us the responsibility to continue what he began and to take care of the broken people regardless of whether or not we like them or whether or not whether or not they share our beliefs and convictions. We are called, we are invited, to be making connections.

No Joy in M&M's

I recently sent this e-mail to the people who make M&M’s after having a conversation about miscellaneous things.

To The Wonderful People Who Make M&M's:

It is a well known fact that M&M's help to make the world a better place. The various varieties of chocolaty delicacies created and sold by this company have changed the lives of millions and brought smiles to countless people in need of a quick chocolate fix. That being said, I have an idea.

It is no secret that the Pretzel M&M's have been a raging success in the mouths of so many Americans. Also the Peanut Butter M&M's, the long time favorite of many, have been gracing the tongues of young and old alike for many years. This has helped to lead me to an idea for an M&M unlike any other.

Last night while enjoying a peanut butter filled pretzel from a local grocer I couldn't help to ponder the possibility of how tantalizing it would be to taste this same delicacy covered in chocolate and coated with a candy shell that melts not in your hand, but rather only in your mouth.

What would it look like for the makers of M&M's to create Peanut Butter filled Pretzel M&M's thus combining both a new and an old favorite into one super candy! Imagine the possibilities!

What would it take for the makers of M&M's to consider producing this creative concoction? Even if only in small batches for limited release! The potential is endless the value immense, and the joy it would bring to the world is invaluable.

Imagine M&M makers! Believe! You have the power to make dreams come true! I hope that you choose to, and as the Bible says, "hope does not disappoint."

With All Legitimate Sincerity,

Scott E. McGhee

A little dramatic? Yes. Heretical?…it might dip a toe in the water. Entertaining and creative? I thought so, as did my co-visionary (co-conspirator?), Heather Sherwood, who helped come up with the idea in the first place, as also did the other various people with whom I have shared this e-mail. The people at M&M’s however did not feel the same way. In fact they went as far as to say that I am unoriginal.

Ouch, talk about killjoys.

John 10:10 says “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

I only have one thing to say about that. Thank you Jesus.

There are times where it really feels like we cannot have fun or enjoy this life that we have been given. It feels like there will always be someone hiding around the corner to steal the enjoyment from anything we do. Take the e-mail I sent to the M&M peoples. Was I serious? Yes. I most definitely was. Did I have a lot of fun with it? I sure did. Yet in the end, the big corporation on the other end of the internet connection had the option to respond in two ways. They either could have entered into the fun that I was clearly having with the e-mail and let me down easy, or they could be a stereotypical organization and give a cold response that shuts off all fun that may be taking place…I was disappointed to receive the latter response.

I feel like the people at M&M’s acted much like the thief that Jesus was talking about, attempting to steal, kill, and destroy the enjoyment I had gotten out of the idea I presented them with, and to be entirely honest, they did a pretty good job of it. Jesus on the other hand says that he wants to do the exact opposite of that. He wants us to live full lives, and even more than that, he wants us to live the fullest lives, full of joy, excitement, adventure, and all around fun. Will things be hard? Yes, he never says they will be easy, but he does say that a life with him will be the fullest kind of life, and I have to believe that after all is said and done, fun will be a big part of the scenario.

Now I do not want to give M&M’s a bad reputation. They were acting in the best interest of their company, and let’s face it, they have a great product, but in this instance I feel as if they were trying to steal all of my joy. But here is another message for them:

To the Wonderful People Who Make M&M’s:

You failed. You can call me unoriginal if you like, but you cannot have what is not yours. My joy lives on in something greater, something that you cannot take from me, and you are also missing out on a great product idea.

With All Legitimate Sincerity,

Scott E. McGhee

P.S. I still love your product and if you ever want to send some free Peanut M&M’s my way…I will not put up a fight!

The End of the Story

I have found that when I finish reading a book I am left with one of three feelings. 1) I am relieved to finally be through with it 2) I find myself wanting to keep reading more desiring that the story continue, or 3) I find myself completely satisfied and wanting nothing more than what the author has given me. Of the three of these scenarios, I believe the third to be the best.

Usually, if I finish a book with the first of my reactions, I did not want to be reading it in the first place (i.e. 99% of the books I “read” as an undergrad). If left with the second, though I may have really enjoyed the book, the author has probably left some loose ends untied and I really just want them to finish what they started. But if I leave a book feeling completely satisfied with it, I feel like the author has done their job; everything started was finished and they were not being presumptuous by trying to set themselves up for a sequel (and everyone knows that the best sequels could have been stand alone stories all by themselves!)

I recently watched the last page of a story turn. It was a story taking place inside of the grander story of my life, taking place inside of the grander story of God. The pages were filled out with true events and the ending was not necessarily a happy one, but it was the right one. The story ended just the way it was supposed to; in a way that left everyone involved satisfied with the part they had played and better off at the conclusion.  This story however did not have a “happily ever after.”

The fairy tales of our youth have a tendency to teach us that every story should have a “happily ever after” tagged on the end of it. This is a lie and worse yet, this is a boring ending. Have you ever stopped to think about what possibly could have happened in the years following the marriage of the Prince and Princess in these fairytales that we idealize so much? What were Cinderella and the Prince like after being married for fifteen years? Did the mice still take care of their homestead? The Prince would probably have been made king and Cinderella queen, what if they had differing ideas on how the country should be run? What if their children were spoiled brats and their eldest son already making plans to usurp his father’s power? Did Cinderella still remember how she attained such a prominent position, or had she been blinded by authority? And despite all that has happened in their lives, were Cinderella and the Prince able to find a way to love each other through it all?

I hope the characters in the movies we grew up watching struggled. I hope they faced new challenges and overcame them. I hope they had disagreements, and experienced tragedies. I hope they lived out their dreams and fought for the things they cared about. I hope they lived in a manner that challenged the status quo in order to bring justice to the people who were hurting.

 A life without struggle and opposition is no life at all. A life without ambition and passion is no life at all. A life without risk, without adventure, without that feeling deep in your gut telling you “this could be a very bad idea but you should probably go ahead and do it anyway” is no life at all.

Sometimes a story needs to end with “and he lived to fight another day” or “after living a full life, she embarked on the grand adventure of eternity” or “but not even that could stop them from chasing their dreams.” These are the real endings that inspire us.

There is a story in the Bible about a woman named Esther who was very beautiful. Esther had kind of a Cinderella experience and one thing led to another and she became the queen of the most powerful empire in the world. She however was a member of a minority group that this guy named Haman hated. The problem here is that Haman was the king’s closest advisor and he convinced the king to order that this entire minority group be killed. Esther had a decision to make. She could sit back and let her people be destroyed or she could take action. Wait a second; I thought this was a Cinderella story. She is the queen now; she should be living “happily ever after,” but then again, that is not reality.

Esther had a cousin named Mordecai living in the king’s city who sent a message to her saying this:

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to a royal position for such a time as this?”

Mordecai saw the potential Esther had to make a difference, and called her out of her “happily ever after” ending by pointing out just how unhappily that story would have ended. Instead he challenged her to fight for an ending greater than the one she had been presented with, and when push came to shove… she decided to throw punches.

The end of Esther’s story may have said something like “And Esther was esteemed as a hero of her people for generations to come.” Not “happily ever after.” Better than “happily ever after.” It ended the way it was supposed to, leaving the readers completely satisfied with it. I would imagine that in the end, Esther was pretty satisfied with the ending herself.

I recently watched the last page of a story turn, and I am glad there was no “happily ever after” at the end. I think this one ended like this: “He smiled wryly. Even though he lost this round, he knew the best was still yet to come.”

Bigger than the Rain

I’ll be honest; I always get a little nervous when I see a dark grey cloud in the skies of sunny San Diego. Every time it happens I can feel a lump form in the pit of my stomach warning me not to go out on the streets because lets face it, if you drive in San Diego in the rain, you may very well die. San Diegans are not the greatest drivers, and rain greets our roads in a manner similar to Godzilla greeting the streets of Tokyo. This past week San Diego experienced minor (at worst moderate) rain storms, and as much as we as like to pretend that the weather is always a nice sunny 75 degrees, we are lying. It does rain for about a week every year and for about a week after that it’s a little bit chilly outside. This week however is by far the most dangerous week to be in San Diego and if you happen to decide to vacation here during that week, may God have mercy on your soul! The infrequency of the rain means that the citizenry has very little experience driving in any kind of weather and just to add to the fun, San Diegans have developed a few techniques to make driving in the rain “safer.” In the five years that I have lived here, I have observed three in particular.

1: The “Drive Fast to Arrive Fast” Technique

This technique focuses on getting to your destination as fast as you can. Driving in the rain is dangerous so obviously the best plan of action is to drive as fast as you can in order to spend as little time on the road as possible. This type of person may be known for forgetting things when they leave the house and usually have around seven different projects going on at the same time.

2: The “Let There Be Light” Technique

This technique says, “Since the combination of nighttime and rain make it extra hard to see, I’ll just turn on my high-beams so I can see better!” This person often compares themselves to Einstein because of their constant strokes of genius! However, if dear old Albert were still around, I am sure he would be quick to point out that using your brights in the rain is one step down from stupidity. The added light is going to reflect brighter off the water and actually make it more difficult for you to see. And lets not forget that they will also blind oncoming motorists making it more likely that they will plow into, well…anything really. Where light is good in the dark, too much light is blinding for everyone. If this is you, do us all a favor and stick to your low-beams.

3: The “Overly Cautious” Techinque

This is by far the most respectable of the three techniques employed by those adventurous enough to delve out onto the rainy San Diego streets; but it still is never a good idea to max out at 29MPH on an open freeway especially when you are sharing the road with people utilizing either of the first two techniques. No one expects you to drive that slowly. Even the ones who know what they are doing.

All of these techniques are fear driven response to the Godzilla like danger of driving in the rain, and ultimately they only make road conditions more dangerous.

When we are faced with a problem, or something we are afraid of, we often let our fears become our undoing. Like a San Diegan driving in the rain, when we are in danger, we often allow the things we are afraid of to drive us into an even more dangerous situation. Our fear motivated attempts to solve our problems actually lead us straight into them. Our fears become our realities.

I believe that this is the opposite of what God wants for us.

In a letter to his young friend Timothy, the apostle Paul encourages him saying “the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7 NIV)

It seems to me that God does not want us to address our problems out of fear because doing so only leads us deeper into our problems and deeper into our fearful reactions. The more afraid we are of something, the more control we give to it and the less we allow God to work in our lives through hardships.

The Spirit of God is not one that plows through a problem wishing it to blow over. He is not one that tries to wash out a problem hoping that it can be covered by too much of a good thing. He does not proceed with apprehension, unsure of his chosen course and second guessing his decisions. Living like this will only make matters worse. Rather the Spirit of God encourages us to go out into the storm and face our problems head on.

I am learning to believe that God desires us to live and to address our problems out of our faith in him. Not with fear, not with timidity, but with boldness, strength and love; trusting that he is strong enough to weather the storms we find ourselves in. God is bigger than the rain.

Asparagus Lemon-Aid

It is often said that when life gives you lemons, you should use them to make lemon-aid. This is a misguiding statement because in reality you need a whole lot more than lemons to make any sort of lemon-aid worth drinking. Think about it. If life gives you oranges, you can make orange juice, all you have to do is squeeze them into a glass and you are good to go. If life were to give you apples, you could probably figure out a way to crush them into 100% apple juice pretty quickly. Sure it might get a little messy, but it would still be drinkable! If life were to give me a carrot, I would probably just eat it because I could use the extra vegetables in my diet and I really don’t know how to make carrot juice. But if life gave me lemons, it seems that all I would be able to do is make lemon juice, which if we are being honest, no one really wants to drink. All lemon juice is good for really is to be used as an ingredient in something else. I once marinated a shark stake in lemon juice and it was fantastic, but I would never want to drink straight lemon juice. No, rather for lemon-aid, added ingredients are necessary.

If life gives you lemons, you are going to need help in order to make that lemon-aid. You will have to go out and find the person to whom life has given sugar and the one to whom life has given water, and then maybe you will have some place to start and the three of you can get together and make some lemon-aid. I bet it would be pretty good too, but if you are anything like me, you won’t be satisfied with just lemon-aid. Your entire being is going to crave something more, something greater! You are going to want to go out and find the guy with the raspberries and the girl with the blueberries, and the new kid down the street who brought a bunch of strawberries with him when he moved in and invite them into the mix to see what kind of creations you can make with these new flavors. If I were the guy with the lemons, I would want to get a little experimental and see if I could convince the asparagus kid to join the party so we could try to make asparagus lemon-aid!

…yes, asparagus lemon-aid.

I know that sounds like a terrible idea, but people said that about the personal computer when it was first released and then naturally assumed that you would never need more than a 40 megabyte hard drive to store all of your information. Whether life gives us lemons, sugar, grapes, tomatoes, or asparagus we have a responsibility to use them to the best of our ability and to invite others into the process with us. This means taking risks together and potentially failing. Some things just should not be mixed, but sometimes we avoid mixing things because we are afraid that they will turn out poorly, and so what if they do? Asparagus and lemons are two things that should probably never be mixed with water and sugar to be consumed on a hot afternoon, but will we ever really know until we try? We learn the most from our failures. If we want to learn we have to be willing to fail because failure produces growth and if we are not willing to fail, then can we actually say that we were willing to try in the first place? Can we actually say that we truly desire the growth that we say we want?

I have never mixed asparagus and lemons for anything in my life, and I feel pretty confident that asparagus lemon-aid would be terrible, but who knows what potential creations the asparagus kid and the lemon man could make if they took the risk to mix two things that at first don’t seem like they belong together. Who can really know the true potential of something until they have taken the risk to try and see what might come of it.

Here is to asparagus lemon-aid. Lets see what we can make of it.

Scott E. McGhee

Why I am a “Writer”

I’m unemployed (or funemployed as some of my friends have been calling it lately), and all that I want to do is write. I realize how impractical that is, and by no means am I just going to stop looking for a job in order to pursue a writing career, but when it comes down to it, there are very few jobs that I’ve come across in my search that I would actually want to do. Then, of the few that do look appealing, I have to live with the fact that I am usually grossly unqualified and have no experience in those fields. Thus I am still unemployed, not to mention a little bit stubborn about where I work and what I do.

I couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog for The Soundless Heard about how we are all uniquely positioned to do various things based on where God has us specifically. Now I’m not saying that I am currently uniquely positioned to be a writer, in all honesty when I start school a week from now, I probably won’t even have time to be a writer anymore, but the truth is that I cannot seem to shake the feeling that this is what I need to be doing right now. I love writing. I love the feeling of getting my thoughts out of my head and on to paper (or digital paper as it is these days). But I think most of all, I love the thought that people are able to read what I have to say and can react to it. It doesn’t even bother me if they react negatively, I might write something down then change my mind based information that someone else brings to my attention. I view writing as just another form of dialogue between me and whoever else wants to read it and respond.

I don’t know if anything will actually come of my trying to pretend to be a writer. If it does, then it is due to the grace of God. All I know is that I really enjoy it, so I am going to keep pursuing it…as well as real employment.

The Joy of a Broken Down Car

Who would ever think that car troubles would be so prevalent at camp? I definitely did not.

I have been here for nine weeks now and have seen a routine forming in my life. My weeks have begun to look very similar to each other and there is not really much variety. When variety has come though it has usually been marked by some form of car trouble. For example, at the end of the only prank war of the summer, by car battery died. No big deal, and I learned how to change a car battery because of it. The next weekend however I drove the camp minivan two hours away to where we go whitewater rafting. When one of the other staff members drove it as part of a shuttle so we could have cars where we finished rafting for the day, he drove the entire way with the emergency brake on, over 20 miles round trip...I had to drive the van back to camp that night because I had responsibilities I needed to take care of the next day. I learned a lot about what shifting into low gears when driving a automatic can do for you since I had been instructed to use the breaks as little as possible, and it turns out that the conversation I had with the person that was with me on the way home was quite possibly one of the best ones I have had this summer. Then the very next night, we had a women's staff appreciation night where we drove them all up to the summit of a local mountain and set up a movie for them which we ran off of a generator...which was not powerful to run the projector, computer, and sound system...so we ran the sound system off of my car battery...Being one of the last to leave that night, there were not a lot of people around to help when my car dies right after we pull onto the road. The car would start, but then it would die instantly. After popping it into neutral and rolling it back into the parking lot, my friend Donny and I slept in my car until 3am when our friends Craig and Chris were able to come and save us. I'm still not entirely sure what was wrong with my car, but we got it running again and it has worked fine ever since and I got to spend some quality time with Donny up there on that mountain as we laughed and hypothesized about what could possibly be wrong with my car.

It is strange to me how every time I'm doing something different from my standard routine, something goes wrong with the car I'm driving. It kind of makes me want to not break my routine at all! But given the fact that I work at a camp and my routine can be changed literally at a moments notice, that is not really an option. At the same time though, these three incidents of car trouble have lead to some really great memories. God has clearly used them all to help point to some of the things that I am going to remember the most about my time here. Part of me is surprised by this, and I'm not entirely sure why. Our God is one who time and again uses our hardships, no matter how small, to bless us and show us how much He actually does love and care for us.

Growing Together

Campers can be really difficult, and I'm not even responsible for any of them. No, rather I'm responsible for their counselors and making sure that they are as sane as possible, and still there are quite a few campers who just drive me up the wall. But on the other hand, there are campers who are the greatest kids you will ever meet in your life. For the last two weeks, we had a group of campers in a programs called Echo and Summit who all fit this description.

The Echo program is one in which high school students pay to come to camp for two weeks to do our dishes and take out our trash. They also go out to different places in the community and do service projects there and when they are not working for the benefit of others, they are usually to be found learning about what it means to actually live the life that Christ calls us to. These kids are in high school and are getting exposure to authors that I had not heard of until a year ago. Needless to say the Echo program is literally life changing.

On a similar scale is our Summit program. The difference is that this program takes in high school students and teaches them how to guide rafts down the river and how to guide a group through the wilderness and how to safely manage groups on our ropes course. Basically they are trained to be staff members for two weeks while getting poured into spiritually as well. It really is a fantastic program.

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with one of our Summit students who, as it turns out, does not yet have a real relationship with Christ. More or less I kind of stumbled into this conversation without really moving. I was just reading a book and he was having a conversation with the Summit director near by and when the director left to talk to someone else momentarily, this young man invited me into the conversation. This was by far the highlight of my week. His questions and concerns were so real and genuine and his emotions were honest and true. He was expressing himself in a way that very few high school students I have known could. I think he is about to embark on the beginning of an adventurous story that will lead him far away from what he has known and into a place where he will be seriously transformed by the love and power of the living God.

I realized that night that camps exist largely so that the campers who come can see how big and how powerful God really is, and on the same scale, for the people who work at the camps to see the same thing. Then campers and staff members can actually be growing together in largely the same ways, but often with different levels of understanding on the point. Sometimes I think the campers actually understand what is going on more than the staff members do.

High Adventure...more or less

This week I was back on the river with our High Adventure program. Because there is still so much snow in the mountains, the rock climbing portion had to be canceled because the roads are all still closed due to being covered in snow leaving us with no access to our rock climbing site. This means that we all had an extra day on the river and what a difference one day can make.

White water rafting is a very tiring activity for people who are not used to doing it every day and when you are dealing with Jr. and Senior High students who are more interested in anything but the physicality it takes to keep the raft moving where it needs to be going, things only get more difficult for everyone.

I was fortunate to have a pretty solid group of paddlers the days I was guiding down the river, but that didn't prevent our group from having a few minor mishaps. The first day, the first group we sent down missed their take out point and had to raft another five miles down the river to get to the next one, which by and large was the most difficult take out on the river to drive a trailer down to. The second day we had a girl slide head first 15 down a cliff into the water from one of our jump rocks. She was fine, just a bit bruised.

The third day on the river is where we had the most trouble. Everyone was tired, even to the point where that morning the Women's Staff Counselor, Kelsey, came up to me and told me that she just didn't have it in her to go rafting that day and had been praying about it and just really felt like she should stay back and rest. This actually worked out really well because then she could come and pick us up at our take out point and help us shuttle at the end of the day. After about an hour of rafting we came to a rapid called Rattle Snake which is currently running at a 3+ level and all of our boats made it through just fine. Unfortunately we were in the second group of boats that went out that day.

After we pulled around the corner after the rapid we found the first group waiting for us. This was a bad sign. This means that something had gone wrong, and as we pulled in, our worst fears were confirmed. One of our guides had been pretty seriously banged up, (thank God it was a guide and not a camper), and needed to be evacuated from the river and get to a hospital. This task fell on me and another guy. We hiked our injured guide out of the canyon and started to look for a car. There were none around so we had to hitchhike back into town.

The first car that came by was a forestry truck. Awesome, the forestry service work camp is right across from the clinic in Happy Camp (the town we raft from) this would be perfect. He drives right past. The next car also drives past without hesitation. Not many cars drive this road so we were beginning to worry a bit about getting our friend to the clinic. Just as I'm walking a little ways down to see if there is anyone that can help us, I hear a car stop behind us. It was Kelsey, on her way to help us shuttle at the take out point.

God is always working on our behalf, and this week has been a great testament to just how much he cares for us. The first two days on the river I had a guy in my boat from a youth group in the bay area. I could tell by some of the things he would say and even by the music he would talk about, that he had lived a very difficult life up until this point, and that he was desperately searching for something to bring him peace. On the way back to camp after we were done rafting that third day, I heard him tell about some of the atrocities that he had had to deal with in such a short time in his life and I just began praying for him, that God would get a hold of his heart.

Thursday night in the middle of our campfire session, a thunderstorm began. It was short, but enough for us to move our "campfire" indoors. After worship and before the speaker spoke, this young guy pulled me aside and we went outside to talk. Fortunately it had stopped raining by that point but the only places there were to sit were soaking wet, but not wanting to stand I sat down on the wet table anyway and came down with a serious case of wet butt. He asked me why I believe in God.

This was the beginning of a really long and powerful conversation about who God is and how He so greatly desires that everyone come to know His love and forgiveness. I got to hear some more of his story and what his life had been like growing up and I was able to listen to him as he honestly told me about the brokenness that he had experienced and the pain that he had been through. He let me work through a lot of that with him and by the time we were done talking I asked him how he was feeling. He said that he thought he had heard all he needed to hear, but he wanted to sleep on it. I told him to come and find me the next day to tell me what he was thinking.

The next day at staff meeting, I found out that he and his counselor had talked for a long time afterward as well, and that night at dinner he came up to me and thanked me for talking with him. He told me that I had changed his perspective on the world and I gave him my contact information so that we will be able to keep the conversation going in the future.

When I was talking with him about God, faith, and all of that stuff, I was able to share with him the story of how Kelsey had chosen to stay back and not raft the morning before, and how it was her who God used to get us off of the road and back to safety that day.

Our guide was back at camp that night, he just needed to be stitched up a bit, but he was fine otherwise.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. - Romans 8:28. Sometimes though I think God likes to remind us just how true that is.