When I walked out of the Annex today a girl asked me where I worked, so I told her to guess. She said retail. That I serve customers. Then I said nope, I work at a church. Then she replied, well that’s sort of the same thing. I thought it was interesting that a fifteen year old unsaved girl brings up the same challenges that I try to bring to the church. That was for free. Now send me a cheque for ten bucks if you are going to read on.
Today I was walking down the hall weaving my way in and out of Day Camp kids when I got a challenge from one of the leaders to go check out the maze. Being Ocelot (crazy inventor who is the smartest person in the world) could never turn down a challenge, so I did it. As I stepped into the room, the maze was about three feet high so I was automatically drawn to drop to my knees and the maze began. As soon as I got in about a foot or two I realized that I wasn’t alone. The maze was already full of kids. I couldn’t really tell how many because the lights flickered off the second I moved forward to start the journey.
As I started to move forward on my hands and knees I started to get a little worried. There was someone in front of me; I think it was a little girl. It could have been a boy. The problem was, that they weren’t moving. They were just sitting there. I tried to convince them to come with me. Using even my name to fill her with courage, but they couldn’t see me and didn’t care. So I trudged along the path of darkness only to encounter the smelly breath of another child breathing in my face. It was absolutely brutal. It didn’t mix well with the hot humid air either and if there was one thing I learned in all of high school science was that hot air diffuses smell faster, so that wasn’t helping either.
I had had enough. I turned around and I think I may have knocked over one of the campers on my way out, but either way, I got out. I stumbled my way out the entrance panting and gasping for some sort of breath of non-day-camp-child-bad-breath-odor-filled-air. I walked out and vowed never to enter the maze again.
A few hours later I was chatting with the day camp director, Rachel, and she was telling me that she finished the maze. Not without an entire hoard of campers attached to every limb. Then she said that she lost a kid, and we made a joke about her having to leave the 99 to go find the lost child. Some kids were crying in the maze. Others were laughing. The site was a little crazy.
This whole scenario is beautiful. Think of the maze as our lives. The day camp director as Jesus. Think of me as a new Christian jumping into things on my own. Then read the story and just think how awesome these parallels work.
I love how Jesus leads the masses through life. He is so concerned with us and walks us through to the end. When one gets lost, he doesn’t just leave them there, he goes and gets them. If we just cling to Jesus, he will lead us. It doesn’t mean the path won’t be dark, or smelly or damp or even dangerous. All it means is that we will make it out of the maze. We can go running in to ourselves. Most likely it will turn out like my escapade and you’ll run for freedom, cause you have no one to cling on to. It is also interesting that they were children. How many times does Christ tell us to be like children and follow him? The second I go in, I freak out. Didn’t act much like a child, did I?
Maybe it’s kind of cheesy. But I think that it shows us in so many ways how much we need Christ and how much we can’t do it on our own. Even more how much we need to be like children before we ever experience the Kingdom of God.