Big God

I am so sore. My lower back is screaming at me. My neck is tight. My calves are fatigued. Even my elbows hurt (that one I can't figure out).

I didn't do a long swim. I didn't run a marathon. I haven't been on my bike. I spent about 20 hours this week with a group of six kids at Vacation Bible School. And I'm more exhausted than if I did all of those previously mentioned athletic endeavors in one day.

I've decided that Vacation Bible School is not for the faint of heart. It is (and was) an incredible experience that I really enjoyed. I had the greatest group of kids. The worship aspect of it was amazing-adults can take a big lesson from kids in terms of how to worship and mean it.

That said, it's an absolutely draining experience.

But all worthwhile things are draining. Running a race. Creating a garden. Giving birth. And while I'm absolutely beat, it's 1:00 a.m. and I decided to post about VBS. Even though I'm drained, I can't stop thinking about what a great experience it was. So I needed to unload my brain.

The thing that I learned this week is that kids totally get how big God is. Andy Stanley has a preaching line I love: "How big is your God?" He asks this rhetorical question when he preaches about how people limit God, when they express doubt that their life, their physical condition, their financial health, can ever change. When we express that kind of doubt, we limit God.

Kids don't do that. They get that God is huge and can do anything. When my campers walked through the parted Red Sea today (blue tarp strung from the ceiling, with toy fish on the ground and teenagers spraying water from small holes in the tarp), their big eyes and their lips making perfectly round "Os" was a physical sign to me that they got how big God is. They asked me how God actually parted the Red Sea. Of course, I told them that I don't know, a perfectly acceptable answer to any question that begins, "how did God . . ." They never asked me "did God really do that?"

We adults take that beautiful child belief in God and dilute it over time, becoming cynical about God's power, if we ever even take His power into account. Even if we don't say it, we often act as if God is too small or impotent or disinterested to help us.

In the back of my mind, I had doubts that we could effectively handle 270+ children from ages 3-9 and help them worship God in a corporate setting while having one-on-one interaction within our small groups. But it happened. One of my campers told me today, "thank you, Miss Kathleen, for being my crew leader. I had so, so, so, so, fun!" (I'm pretty sure he meant it was so fun, not so-so fun).

How big is my God? Huge. I just forget how big sometimes.

I Shaved My Legs For This?

Deana Carter had the greatest album title ever. I have never listened to her music (from the 90s, I think) but I remember the album title that is also a true life statement, a rhetorical question that all women have asked themselves, even if only in sentiment.

Did I shave my legs for this? It is the question that ruminates in my mind while experiencing an event that is a total letdown.

This was the question that I thought of as traveled this past weekend to my husband's 26th high school class reunion (they weren't organized enough for a 25th reunion). My expectations were very low. I remember my 20th reunion, where after an hour I realized I lost my husband and found him holding up a wall with the rest of the spouses, looking bored to death. The difference is that my husband likes to meet people, so that experience, where he really couldn't find a way to scream to strangers over the music, was not very satisfying for him. I, on the other hand, don't like to meet strangers all that much, so I actually ditched my husband while he was involved in a conversation with a former classmate, got a Yuengling (it was a Pennsylvania high school reunion, after all) and listened to the greatest 80s cover band I ever heard: Velveta (because they do 80s cheese, I presume). So, despite my predicted level of enjoyment, I actually had a really good time. But this was because I gave up participating in the purpose of the event, meeting people, and went off on my own for awhile. Always the loner.

We have all had experiences where we can't believe we actually put in time to attend a lame function, much less engage in any grooming effort in the process. I imagine men say, "I shaved my face for this?" or "I put on a tie for this?" In college, I had this experience just about every time I attended a party (which, admittedly, was rare). My friends would drag me out at some crazy hour to stand on a sticky floor in a smelly place with people acting like idiots. Ok, yes, I was born 80 years old.

I also think most New Year's Eve celebrations fall into this category, and many Proms. These events try too hard and usually fail to live up to the hype, in my opinion.

I think about Deana Carter's question now in a seemingly strange context. At Nativity, we want to be an environment so irresistible to people, especially those who don't have a church and are searching or lost in the crowd, that they want to come back even though, maybe to them, "God talk" is scary or has negative connotations. We want to be a place where women don't think to themselves as they leave, "I can't believe I shaved my legs for this." We don't want men to leave Nativity thinking, "I can't believe I put a tie on for this" (which is a misplaced example, perhaps, since you can count the men in ties at Nativity on one hand). We want people to leave Nativity feeling like they made a good decision to get out of bed earlier than they wanted to on Sunday morning.

Nativity's mission is to cancel out the feeling many of us have as we try a new experience or event that is outside of our comfort zone. Nativity wants people to want to come back, even if they don't know Christ or perhaps even if they are resistant to entering any relationship with Him. At the very least, Nativity wants to provide an environment where even the toughest skeptic would be willing to come back with his or her family.

The hardest part is when we seem to hit the mark, we quickly turn to thinking of ways to improve the experience. We recognize that we never get it perfectly right and there is always room for improvement.

But that's the nature of church (at least good church). There is always a great challenge ahead.