Faith Walk

As some of you may have known, I was at girls' camp last week. If you didn't know before, now you do. While the experience was wonderful, I have a few major things to share. But first, the minor things. My "nationality" changed many, many times a day. I started as an Irish máthair, then became a Scottish drunk for a skit, then I put on a lei/skirt and did the hula, I got called German for my outfit, my pajama pants tucked into my socks looked rather Arabian, and I was spurting random Spanish words and shouting "Arrrrrrrriba!" all the time. I got to the the Fire Patrol and light/supervise the lighting of all the fires (why they let me do that I'll never know). I danced in the thunder, lightning, and rain for an hour or more on Friday. The full moon was breathtaking up there. Now that I've got through all that stuff, here's one of the big things I learned up there. Well, I suppose I've always known it, but it was more illustrated by a change in perpective.

Friday morning we went into one of the many bunches of aspens at Shalom and set up a Faith Walk. We twisted a rope in and out and around lots of trees through many natural obstacles. The YCLs (youth camp leader, which I was) were then assigned to be a good voice or a bad voice. Two of the seven were good, the rest were bad. I was a bad voice. The other girls were then blindfolded, set on the rope, and told to follow it and not take off their blindfolds until they got to the end. I was positioned rather closer to the end, though I wasn't the last voice, and I was right next to a tricky clump of aspens (well, probably one aspen, but you can't quite tell when you're above ground, can you?). When the girls would come to me, I'd tell them that the trees were coming and if they grabbed my hand I would help them through it. Most times they wouldn't trust me and they would hit their heads on the trees. Then, shortly after the trees, I had tied a black ribbon onto the rope. When they approached it, I told them that the path took a sharp turn to the right and they needed to follow it. Most of them trusted me after hitting their heads on the trees, so they grabbed the ribbon. At that point nearly everyone remarked on the difference in texture. I--being a pretend minion of the father of all lies--told them that we had run out of real rope and we had to make due with ribbon. At that point, the majority would reach back to the real rope and discover my deceitful ways. However, a good number would trust me and continue. I then got 'twixt them and the rope and nudged them away. None could really find their way back without help at that point. Now, some few would listen to me when I told them to grab my hand before the aspens. Then I'd tell them that if they let go of the rope they could quickly skip the trees and I'd get them right back to the rope. Only one fell for that, but it was pretty sad when she did.

Most of you who regularly read this will now discern that the rope held the same meaning as the iron rod in Lehi's dream ("Hold to the rod, the iron rod. 'Tis strong and bright and true," I love hymns). Anyway, after seeing what small success the other "demons" had, I discovered that my sickening success had been due, mainly, to the clump of trees (representing trials and tribulations, in case you needed a little help jumping to that conclusion). The one girl who grabbed my hand and let go of the rope did so to avoid the trees, but she ended up in more trouble than if she had just ran into the trees (she tripped a couple times before I led her back to the rope feeling quite guilty). The one's who followed the false rope did so because they had just gone through the clump of trees and didn't like what they had just experienced. They followed the ribbon to avoid further complications of that kind.

Now let me speak plainly, shoving the real lesson I learned right in your face. Satan will try to tempt us strongest at the most inopportune times in our lives. If we're already having a hard time, that's when he's going to try his hardest to get us to turn away from God, because that is when he has the best chance. It is when we are feeblest, as we have just, or will soon, or are (etc.) having a difficult time and are already grasping for things to keep us afloat. But it is at these times that we need to be most aware, the strongest, and the most prepared.

On a lighter note, my paper plate award (due to the above incident) was "The Deciver [sic]: 'Take my hand.'"