Life Lessons from Mountain Camping
Leviticus 19.18
Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD.
Matthew 22.34-40
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
This past weekend I was able to go camping with the Explore group from church. Dads and their 7-16 year-old kids. We were able to spend time in the edge of the mountains. Seeing the beauty of the mountains. The fresh streams flowing down. The natural sounds of chain saws preparing firewood for the campfires. The friendliness of other campers walking in the park areas and on the paths up the mountain. Peaceful, relaxing, quiet, and the noise of kids running and enjoying a few days away from the glare of technology.
We see in the group gathered the contrast in our life stages. Four of us in the age of kids grown and out of the house. Looking at the later years of working, one retired. Looking back fondly at those years when we had the kids in our homes.
Several dads in the busyness of working and raising kids. Busier, but still more energy than some of us. In the midst of life with their families.
A large number of kids. I didn’t count the actual number. Looking forward to life. Enjoying the life of freedom, and the incarceration of school life. But looking forward. Not yet knowing what the future of adulthood and work will look like.
We started Sunday with a short talk together about that issue of the future. The age-old question: “What do you want to be…?” Do you think that people are all doing the things that we expected when we were young? And when we look back, most are in different places than we thought we might be when we looked ahead from childhood.
What about those people working the jobs we didn’t want, or still don’t want? How do we respect the people taking care of the community and creation in ways we want to avoid? Ways we certainly need. Who would want to live in a world where no one took the trash from our bins each week? Who would like to forego having people clean the washrooms in public places? Or have no one clean dishes in the restaurants we want to visit? How do we respect and show appreciation for those who do the jobs we don’t want? What does it say about our following this command God gave to the people a few thousand years ago, which Jesus repeats in the gospels? How do we show love for our neighbours?
Next time we see someone working in ways that differ from our own – stores, restaurants, drivers, think of what we each don’t want to do – see the value of one who is taking part in the good of the community. Look up to those who serve us and serve with us. God working in them as they do work in God’s world.