on rediscovering the familiar.

       I believe everybody has questions. It's a topic I've discussed numerous times before, but we all have things we wish we understood better. And more often than not our questions are very similar, if not the same. This is why one of the most important things we can do for each other is to create environments in which these questions can be explored.

Maranatha Bible Camp is one such environment. During one of their summer camps for junior high kids they create one of the most useful tools I have ever seen. It's been named "sync" and its a time when campers are allowed to anonymously submit questions that will be answered by a group of three men and three women. I was skeptical the first time I saw it in action, but that skepticism faded very quickly. Questions are submitted that you would never have thought a junior high kid was capable of coming up with. It's an amazing experience and I love it with all my heart.

But if we're being honest, one of the big reasons I love it so much is that it's even been very useful for me. In fact I dare say it is for everybody. Initially I went in planning to sit and listen while my campers had their questions answered. By the end I could be seen furiously scribbling in my notebook as I attempted to keep up with the words of the six people on stage. The questions submitted are from campers who want serious, truthful answers that are not watered down or simplified. And that's what they get. They are met on a theological level with replies that are serious, mature, and truthful. They are never treated as if they couldn't possibly understand and they are not given the simple story-book versions of what the bible says. It's refreshing.

For the most part the scribblings in my notebook reflect topics that I can use later to start conversations with my kids, or a different perspective on something that I had already been talking to them about. But this last year I had a "wow" moment. It's one of those times when a truth just hit me out of the blue, answering a question that I have had for years. Honestly I didn't even know I had the question, if it can even be called that. In fact my "wow" moment was entirely unrelated to what the person speaking was even talking about. It came as a result of a small, offhand comment that he made. In talking about why bad things happen and why this world seems to be devastatingly destructive and evil, he was addressing our inability to take control of a situation. His comment, which I am heavily paraphrasing, was something like this:

      "We are incapable of doing it alone because we are only here, and we are only now. We are trapped within our circumstances. God is not. He created here and he created now, but he is not trapped in the here or the now he just..........is. And we can rest in the God who simply is."

The story of Moses is one that I have heard many times over, and it is not one that I have ever failed to understand. But God's words at the burning bush have never struck me as awe inspiring. "I Am" is a factually significant name. A theologically useful definition of God, and that's how I have always thought of it. But in hearing the speaker's words in Sync that day, something just brought me right back to that story. There was no sudden understanding, or an earth shattering epiphany. I simply was struck by the beauty of those words, for the first time, and the statement that God is making to moses when He says "I Am":

 "We can rest in the God who simply is".

Wow.