PUTTING A FACE ON JESUS

I am writing this blog right after Thanksgiving heading for Christmas, but my mind is on needy kids and summer camps.  This past August, I was blessed to be in Phoenix for a truly awesome, unforgettable reunion of Camp O Wood staff.  This Salvation Army camp functioned in the Catalina mountains of Arizona for about 50 years impacting thousands of children until it was sold in the nineties.  The reunion brought back a flood of precious memories of staff and campers for the 150 or so former staff who came from across the country for the event.

The Salvation Army’s camp ministry, over sixty camps across North America, is devoted to lovingly impacting the lives of children mostly from the inner cities of the nation. In this case, so many kids that came to Camp O Wood, boys and girls, were from homes where the father was absent and the mother was exhausted from trying to keep it all together.  Kids in these home environments missed out on the quality of family life that we may sometimes take for granted.  Discussions with an adult of life’s joys and challenges were rare.  Affirmation of kids' personal worth was equally rare.  Then . . .

Then they came to camp.  For so many, they came with ideas of God that were unfocussed and/or distorted. They could not imagine a God as a Father who was transcendent (mighty, Creator of the universe, all powerful, all knowing, present everywhere) and yet full of loving kindness, caring, and compassion.  They encountered a quality of life that was different than home.  Camp staff were more than friendly.  They were loving and kind, sometimes with tough love, but nevertheless they seemed to care.  That became clearer and more profound as the camp period progressed.  The faith of the staff was being lived out in campers daily lives as love.  Galatians 5:6 was a reality, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love.”  In that love, campers could begin to imagine a God who loves.  Jesus put a face on God the Father.  Camp staff put a face on Jesus.

My son is now 32 years old.  He's ministering in the context of a Salvation Army community center in Seattle.  When he was about thirteen, he came to me with a problem not knowing what to do.  He wore a WWJD bracelet.  I said to him, “Well what about the bracelet.  What would Jesus do.”  He said, “I struggle thinking about What would Jesus do.  But instead I think – what would Auntie Marilyn do?”  For my son at that age, Auntie Marilyn put a face on Jesus.  That’s what camp did for thousands of campers over all the years and especially for those kids who returned to camp summer after summer.  That’s what I love about the memories knowing that I played a small part in putting a face on Jesus who puts a face on a loving God our Father.