Tuesday Night Thoughts

If I didn't know myself before this trip, I most definitely am getting a brilliant chance to attempt to. Worship provides an unprecedented opportunity for introspection -- time to dive into who you are in Christ, who you want to be, where you want to go.

And at the same time, it gives you a direct insight into the things you want to leave behind. The things you can't face up to on your own. The issues that we think we can run away from.

I only hope that this is not simply a personal experience. That this is a collective thing. Something that we as believers this week can work through and push through together.

While many of my things are dreams I have yet to achieve or things that I want to do that I haven't yet been able to -- things I feel called to conquer and am still working toward -- a lot of these youth's issues are so much deeper than that.

The scars needing to be wiped away fade slowly and the wounds that need healing are deep. I cannot imagine dealing with some of the things that these some six thousand youth deal with daily.

I am impressed and awed by their strength and willingness. I'm struck by their honesty and hope.

I hope that you have the opportunity to be awe struck by the strength of the young people that fill our churches as I have.

On a related note, I also hope that you, at some point, have the opportunity to see 7,000 people doing the Macarena. I really had hoped it had died. No such luck.

Please pray that God continues to move in powerful ways here at CHIC. It's only Tuesday and we've already been wiped clean of so much, but there's so much more to uncover. Pray that we staff and counselors have the wisdom to open ourselves as mechanisms for God, that those wounds uncovered can be healed by God through us and that in turn, we can raise up the generation that I see coming to save the image of the Church. To bring it back to something so plain and simple that I think we forget sometimes. And this something is rather much more a someone.

Someone called Jesus.

In Him,
Colin