So I’ve decided to stop titling these posts “training camp part whatever” cuz that was just getting old. But don’t be confused! This post is still about training camp!
So on Wednesday (maybe) of training camp, the men and the women split up into their respective groups (I went with the men just to clarify). So the men went hiking into the woods. After a quick talk about being a man of God, we were told we were gonna do an activity. We were going to walk down to the lake where we would find a pile of fire wood. In the middle of the lake, about 300 yards away from the shore, was an island. It was our job to build a fire on the island. Obviously, that involved taking the logs from the shore to the island. And yes, our mode of transportation was swimming. And just in case you’ve never built a fire before, wet logs don’t catch on fire very easily. So to summarize, each person had to swim about 300 yards while carrying a log above his head in order to keep the log dry. Now, there’s probably somwhere around 20 of us men. The smart thing to do would be to work as a team to form an assembly line across the lake to get the logs across to the island. And we did that…….eventually. But first, we had to be macho because we are, after all, manly men. So we all stripped down to our underwear (scandalous!), took a log and started swimming. I, along with several others of the not very strong swimmers, got about halfway and then proceeded to drink lake water and almost drown. Luckily, about halfway, you reach another part of the shore where you can again stand. So I was able to rest there and not drown. But by then, I had realized that I could not swim any farther with that log (which I had already failed to keep dry.) Now I don’t normally consider myself to be that prideful of a person, but I realized that day how prideful I can be. It absoutely killed me to have to ask others for help and not to be able to contribute anymore in getting the log the rest of the way. I felt like I was letting down my team, and I hated it. But what an awesome lesson of humility and teamwork that exercise proved to be. We all as men realized how much we have to rely on others as brothers in Christ. Not just in a stupid log carrying exercise but in life. We all have problems, we all have burdens and struggles, and if we try to carry it completely on our own, we’ll drown just like some of us almost literally drowned in the lake that day. But Christ made us to be brothers to each other. When we confess our sins and struggles to each other and ask each other for help, amazing things can happen in Christ’s name!
Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed
James 5:16A
