Op Camp

I just came home from Opportunity Camp today.  I was the camp doctor, but only in title.  The truth is I delegated all the nursing duties, and most all the duties were nursing duties.  I really like my role at camp, it's sort of a father-figure role.  This year I didn't feel like I worked very hard.  I found myself remembering my days as a counselor back in high school.  I was a little jealous of the counselors at camp this year.  My job was much easier than theirs.  I didn't have to sleep in a cabin that smelled like stinky socks, or chase kids across the campground trying to keep them in Songfest, or moderate any number of endless skirmishes between unruly children.  I got to stay up as late as I wanted and talk to whoever I wanted, whenever I wanted.  

But at the end of camp, I didn't get to feel what the counselors felt--that sense that I they had just given every ounce of their strength to a bunch of kids, most of whom will never express any thankfulness.  

Loving the poor is a sacrament.  In loving the poor we actually experience Jesus in a physical way, just like communion or baptism or marriage.  When I think about why I want to love the poor, it's mostly because I want to know Jesus better.  It's like an addiction.  I got my first fix at Op Camp when I was in 9th grade wrestling to get an 8 year old camper from Oakland, California to go to bed and stop spitting on me.  I hated it, but I felt the deepest joy I had ever known.  I was really loving someone.  For the first time in my life I was loving without any expectation of love in return.  Not at first, of course.  I went to the camp the camp with noble plans to "train the poor little kids to be like me."  That week broke something in me: my expectation that people were supposed to love me back, and my sense of entitlement that said that I had a right to expect people to change in response to my efforts.  That was the part where I saw Jesus.  That's how he lived his whole life.  He didn't love to be loved.  He loved because he IS love.  And I'm no better than that 8 year old who never said thank you.

So if you want to see Jesus more clearly; if you want to see your heart changed to be more like His, find the most broken person you can find and give yourself to them unconditionally.  Not for a few hours, but for as long as it takes.  You will hate it.  It will offend you and confuse you and anger you.  You may get hurt physically.  You will be hurt emotionally.  And you will know Jesus more deeply than you have before.  It's like communion, but instead of just remembering the cross you get to taste a bit of its pain.

So I plan to go back to Opportunity Camp next year, and I suspect God wants me to be a camp doctor and mentor, but if I could choose anywhere to be, I'd be in the cabin with some bratty 8 year old and his stinky socks.