Tip of My Iceberg

She just turned ten, and this is the summer when she gets to go to sleep-away camp for the first time.

Sloane is one of those young people who makes friends wherever she goes. She spends five minutes in line at Chick-fil-A talking to another young gal, and they’re buddies by the time they get their food.

She’ll get to put all that energy and sociability into practice as she is at camp in New York. She’s friends with three of the girls who are going. There will be about eighty others there. I’m betting they’re all besties by week’s end.

Something is refreshing about these types of camping experiences. There will be boating, hiking, swimming, and archery, along with times of studying the Bible. Ministering to the physical and spiritual. I like the fact that they look at the whole person, not just the “doing” part of camp, but investing in the “being” of a growing person.

Too often today, only the obvious need is addressed. I have a dear friend who has cancer, and she is going through a regimen of procedures, including chemotherapy and radiation. The doctors aren’t addressing her concerns and anxieties about her children if she should happen to die. They manage the part of her they’re trying to fix.

It’s her mind, body, and soul which are going through all these processes, and singling out just the physical aspect doesn’t help the person heal as a whole.

Jesus fully understood this. Once He began His ministry, He had people coming to Him for healing of all sorts of maladies, including releasing them from indwelling demons. There was so much pressure and anxiety in and around Jerusalem, with high taxes from Rome and even higher expectations from the religious leaders on how people should act, that people continually felt the heaviness of life.

One day, as Jesus was walking through Jerusalem, He encountered a man who’d been born blind. The religious leaders, always wanting to trap Jesus in some way, asked whose sin had caused this man’s blindness, his or his parents’. When Jesus told them neither, that it was an opportunity for God to show His glory, they didn’t believe Him. Jesus spat on the ground, made mud, wiped the mud on the man’s eyes, and told him to wash it off in the pool of Siloam. When the man did as he was told, his sight was restored.

When asked how he was able to see, he told them what Jesus had done, but they didn’t believe him. They badgered him and his parents, asking if they were sure this was their son who had been blind. The man himself faced intense interrogation and rejection as these religious leaders threw him out of the temple. They asked people who knew him if he’d really been blind. They refused to believe what had happened.

“When Jesus heard what had happened, He found the man and asked, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ The man answered, ‘Who is He, sir? I want to believe in Him.’ ‘You have seen Him,’ Jesus said, ‘and He is speaking to you!’ ‘Yes, Lord, I believe!’ the man said. And He worshiped Jesus.” John 9:35-38.

The blind man had been mocked, his integrity questioned, and his experience maligned. But Jesus not only healed his sight, but his heart. Jesus gave him a reason to believe.

Sloane is going to be challenged physically, intellectually, and spiritually with activities and questions at camp. She will have a holistic experience in her time there.

Jesus sees us as whole people, not just with a current problem, a specific need, or an ongoing challenge.

And He seeks to meet all those needs.