Square dancing and line dancing; hiking and go-carting; horseback riding and fishing; joking and laughing; golfing and crafting are just a few of the vivid memories my family holds of Christian Community Camp in Colorado. But two memories stand out for me. The first one was when Connor was seven months old and he began to crawl. I will never forget watching him across the room as he pushed up on all fours and started rocking and then took that first reaching movement. The other memory was when Connor was 19 and had just finished his first year at college. We were hiking that famous “across the park” hike from Bear Lake to Grand Lake as a family. Not just our immediate family but about 20 folks from our church family. The wind made the hike extra challenging especially on the several mile section above the tree line. And on the way down, my husband Dave slipped and tore his quadricep. And two members of our church family got on either side of Dave and let him drape his weight upon their shoulders and helped him inch down the last several miles of the mountain. They carried him down the mountain.

These two memories symbolize for me, not only the joy of community camp, but the joy of Christian community. We come together to teach one another how to crawl, how to walk, how to grow as Christian people. We teach one another the words of scripture, the songs of faith, the way to pray, the path of service, the ways of love. But we also catch one another when we fall. We are there to shoulder one another through grief, to lift each other up after failure, to support each other when one’s faith is fractured.

Paul wrote to the church in Rome saying, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God… we who are many, are one body in Christ and individually we are members one of another.” (Romans 12: 1, 5) When we teach each other the ways of faith and when we support one another through life’s challenges we are becoming the body of Christ here on earth. Some days we may feel like we aren’t very good at the Christian walk and the best we can do is crawl. The family of faith cheers us on. Some days we do not have the strength to finish a hike down life’s mountain but the arms of God carry us home.

Grace and Peace,

Carla
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