Morning Watch Monday: The Mud Pit
Morning Watch Mondays
Welcome back to our blog series, written by Matt Sloan, Camp’s Chaplain and Shoulder Season Events Director. These “Morning Watch Mondays” will be posted twice a month. They invite a moment of reflection focused on Christian values, the same way our daily Morning Watch times do during camp in the summer.
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As each guest enters the grounds of Falling Creek Camp from Green River Road, you cross through the gate and drive over an incredibly beautiful covered bridge. You then make a left turn to pass through an area of camp known as “The Flats”. To me, it feels like you are floating in your vehicle through a canopy of beautiful trees and lush grasses. Before the final turn up the mountain, you can roll down your window to feel the cool morning breeze that has blown across the Green River which runs parallel to the road. Sometimes you can even experience the smell of honeysuckle with a waft of relaxation. The Flats are a location that is consistently a peaceful wonderland…
…except when there’s 400 campers and counselors running around on the day of our July 4th celebration during Main Camp. Then, my friends, it gets rowdy!
The Flats on Independence Day is part of Falling Creek lore. Massive group games are played in the fields and through the woods, campers are splashing and inner-tubing their way down the Green River, and Eno hammocks are hung as far as the eye can see. There’s Spikeball and volleyball, corn hole and kickball, yet the “pièce de résistance” is by far… THE MUD PIT!
Butted up against the mountain is a muddy pond in The Flats, conveniently only a couple of feet deep with the perfect mixture of dirt to water, almost as if it were groomed for such a time as this… Experienced campers will walk down the mountain into the field that morning, and celebrate their independence by dropping their gear quickly to return to their long-lost muddy sanctuary. It is almost as if they are being summoned by the mysteries and adventures held within The Mud Pit, while newer campers look on with hesitant admiration before jumping in themselves.
Soon mud is flying and campers are shrieking from the joys of being freed from the shackles of a tame world (appropriate on a day such as this!). Yates and Marisa are powerless to withstand the draw of The Mud Pit and they love to get in (campers, make sure you remind them of this during the summer)!
Did you know that the God who made us would be in that Mud Pit with us, too? That might seem hard to imagine, but the proof is in the pudding (or mud, for that matter). God proves He does not stand far off from us and “lord over us”, but He jumps into our very lives with us, and proved it by being born into our world as Jesus. There are so many stories in the Bible that show that Jesus knows exactly what it feels like to feel what we feel, and experience what we experience. He knows how it feels when we feel joyful and loved, and he knows how it feels when we feel alone and rejected. God has experienced those things firsthand.
Get this, He played in the mud. It’s true! In fact you can find Jesus spitting onto dirt and making His own mud at times! Once He ran across a man who had been born blind and wanted him to be able to see, and He used mud to heal him.
John 9 says, “Jesus spit on the ground, made some mud with this saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. ‘Go’, he told him, ‘wash in the Pool of Siloam’ (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.”
Why did Jesus do this? Couldn’t He have just said “You’re healed” and accomplished the same thing? Yes, He could have healed the man’s sight with only His words, but God shows through Jesus that He is interested in more than just physically healing us, He wants to heal our insides as well. The blind man physically felt Jesus’ muddy hands because Jesus wanted him to know He was not far off, but real and right there with him. Jesus wanted the man to know His touch and how close He really is, and He wants the same for us!
Question of the Day What is your reaction to God being in the “mud” of our lives next to you right now, in the good times and the bad?
Thought of the Day God would love it if you playfully snuck up behind Him and smeared mud in His hair.