Peaks and Valleys

Hey Campers, Mater here!
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​Guess What! Only 141 days until the first day of Session 1! Preparation has already begun to make Summer ‘17 the best yet! As you can probably tell, I can not wait until Camp starts and my jorts can make a comeback! But, in the meantime I have been tasked with this edition of the CBC Counsellor Blog.

To keep with last summer's theme, my “Truth of the Day” is, Jesus is always there.

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Deuteronomy 31:8 says,

“It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be
with you; he will not leave you or forsake you.
Do not fear or be dismayed.”

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Every Christian, whether upfront or not, goes through peaks and valleys within their relationship with Christ. Personally, coming off of this summer, I found myself at one of the largest peaks in my faith journey. As school progressed, my hockey season began, my job gave me more hours, all my other commitments built up, and I found my relationship with God got placed on the back burner. I was in a valley. Unlike before, this faith valley was deep, “the higher you are, the harder you fall”. I felt like I had betrayed this bond that I worked hard to create with God during the peak. Through this time I was distant with God. I am now on an incline in my faith and back to a peak which shows me how Jesus is always there. In the Bible, it says that all prayers should be made in thanks to the Lord yet, I find that most of my prayers are asking for something. When I think about that I realize how unfair that is to God, a friendship would not last long if all our conversations were me asking for something.

A few weeks ago, Midgel talked about Jesus seeking us, using the Sheep and Shepherd parable that we learned as one of our Truth’s of the Day during camp as proof that Jesus wants us to have a relationship with him. In addition to that, just like any other relationship with our friends, our relationship with Jesus has to go both ways, equally. How real is a friendship if you only talk when you need something from the other? In the same way, how genuine is our relationship with God if we only seek him when we need something? I was a constant ‘necessity prayer’ when things weren't going my way. That's when I would bow my head and send a small prayer his way but, when things were good, God was the furthest from my brain and I certainly was not praying.

Just like any other relationship with our friends, our relationship with Jesus has to go both ways.

A song by a christian artist NF, called “Oh Lord”, describes the struggle of a christian and exactly what I am talking about in this blog. The need for a two-way and equal connection with God. Some of the lines to the song say, ”Don't nobody wanna pray, Till they got something to pray for… God becomes real to us, but only when we dying in bed, When ya healthy it's like, we don't really care for Him then, Leave me alone God, I'll call you when I need you again”. The song is a great example of a real problem and great challenge to us Christians.

Thanks for reading! I hope this will help anyone who struggles with this in their Christian life. Can’t wait to see you all at camp again this summer!

Mater