God In The Silence

A couple weekends ago myself and a few of the other Heirborne leaders had the privilege of taking the middle school students to Camp Timber-lee in East Tory, WI.  We go to a camp every winter for our annual snow camp, it's a really cool tradition that the students love. This year was no exception, the students had a great time and many of them encountered God powerfully. For me where I saw God in the biggest way was the very first night on a toboggan. Now for those of you who are reading this and hail from warmer areas of the world, a toboggan is basically a wooden surfboard flattened out and bent at the front. Here's a picture of one: Anyway I had never been on the toboggan shoot at Camp Timber-lee so that's one of the first things I wanted to do. When I was sitting on the toboggan at the top of the hill looking down it looked like a pretty gradual decline, which would made for a really lame toboggan hill, so I wasn't all that anxious. I had it under control. However; as I started to move it became all the more apparent that my judgment was wrong and that the hill was actually much much steeper than it seemed. See after that gradual decline I talked about it practically dropped off at a 90 degree angle. It turned out to be the best toboggan hill I have ever been on, but the really cool thing wasn't the hill. What took me back was that when the hill leveled out at the bottom the camp designed it so that you would shoot out onto the frozen lake This was my favorite part of the whole weekend because I saw God out there on that frozen lake. After the noise of the trees around me on the hill and of me screaming subsided I realized I was on a toboggan and I was surrounded by God. What I mean was that when I got out on that lake all I saw was darkness in front of me, snow beside me, and the shining stars above me. In that moment there was complete silence and I saw God all around me. I don't mean I literally saw Him, but I felt Him. Everything else in my life took a backseat and I had peace.

I sat there for a second just taking it all in and I thought about life. Aren't we in similar situations often? Don't we feel like I felt at the top of the hill, that life is manageable. That life is a "gradual decline" and that we can handle it ourselves. But it's when we are flying down the hill screaming that we want God there, that we cry out for Him, and just as he showed me on that lake that He is there in the darkness shining through. I don't know what you are going through, but I can promise you that God is with you every step of the way. It may take silence for you to realize that, or it may take something much much louder and more painful to get your attention, but He is there. I can promise you of that much.