Change

A few days ago, we drove up to one of my favorite places in the world, Asbury Hills United Methodist Campground. Asbury Hills is special to me because of its sentimental value. As a youth, every fall we had a retreat up to Cleveland, SC that was the highlight of the year. I have many great memories of those trips during the seven years I was in the youth group. While in college, I worked at Asbury Hills for a summer. I recall that summer as one of my best ever. So when Megan offered me a chance to go with her to visit the kids from her church who had been at camp all week, I couldn’t pass it up. Walking into a dinning hall filled with kids, kids who had been camping out in some pretty rustic conditions, you can imagine the first thought. “Wow, these kids stink! I don’t remember them smelling this bad when I was here.” While the smell may have appeared to change, some things have not. The kids still eat family style, working together to get the food to everyone and cleaning up the tables. The kids still bang on the tables after dinner, chatting crazy rhymes together. And thankfully, the kids still sing “Here I Am, Lord” at the end of each week. Still today I can’t sing that song without a tear coming to my eye.
Interesting enough, we got into a conversation with one of the female counselors over lunch. She was one of those life-time members of the Asbury Hills Family. The kind that go to camp as a kid, then are CIT’s (Counselor-in-training) for two years or so, and then are full counselors. In all total, she had been at Asbury Hills in some way, shape or form for the last thirteen years. (It was only when I got home and looked back at my pictures that I realized she was one of my campers when I was a counselor, 9 years ago. Boy do I feel old.) Talking to her was very insightful. She was very opinionated about some of the changes that appear to be coming to Asbury Hills. Without the boring details, the camp is supposedly going to look rather different in the future. And she wasn’t completely buying into it. I suppose she had a right to be wary, I mean she had a lot of time and energy invested in the camp, and she didn’t really want to see it change from what she had grown to love. She said that even the kids were talking about not liking the changes at Asbury Hills. That got me thinking, here is a camp that is filled with young people resisting change, just like many congregations who are filled with much older people. Do we ever like change? As human beings, has God created us in a certain way that we want to resist change? Or, better yet, did that come with ‘The Fall’? That would make me feel a little better if it did. Regardless of where it came from, resistance to change is all too real, no matter the age of the person involved. But, and it’s a pretty big BUT, change has to come. It’s necessary. It is the only thing that keeps us alive. Literally, the medical definition of death deals with the fact that it occurs when the body ceases to change. Of course, all of this has huge implications for businesses, institutions (like the church), corporations, states (although we in SC don’t believe this) even nations, but I believe it also has implications for us as individuals. We are constantly changing, that’s the way God made us. The question for us is this: Are we changing for the better or changing for the worse? Are we constantly trying to improve ourselves and be more than we are right now, or are we just trying to get by? Are we picking up bad or negative habits that are hurting us more than they are helping us? Are we living in a way in which changes come easy or do we go kicking and screaming? I know I’m anticipating some HUGE changes. Maybe, with God’s help, I can start living in a way in which those changes won’t be so difficult.
Brad