Oh... boy...

So... I just got back from survival camp.

(Location and the organization offering the camp are classified. Sorry, guys. =P)

I have one word to describe it: ow. Ow, ow, ow.

If you've been around me/read my writing for any length of time, you'll know that I don't typically feel very much physical pain. And I've gone to this camp twice before, so I should've known what to expect... right?

Wrong. There was a change of directors... suffice it to say that the new director is an ex-Marine and still thinks like a Marine. Thus, everyone who attended the camp is now tired and sore (and if they're sunscreenophobic like me, probably pretty sunburned too).

Allow me to provide an example. While at this camp, the attendees are divided into teams. The object of the camp is for each team to become a well-oiled machine in five days. In order to facilitate that, there are certain tortures euphemistically referred to as "team-building exercises."

Perhaps the most painful of these is "The Wall." Essentially, it's a 12-foot sheer drop that all the people on the team are supposed to get over... and over and over and over. I think I ended up going over it eight or ten times in total, so I now have three bruises on my left leg, two bruises on my right forearm, and one large bruise in my right bicep. (Yes, I said "in" on purpose.)

That, however, is beside the point. (I am making the unfortunate mistake of inserting a point with no prior introduction to said point. I am very tired...) The point is that it takes a whole team to get over the wall. The team may drag people up sometimes and grind soft muscles on the top of the wall *cough*, but without that team, nobody would get over.

Similarly, we as Christians can't expect to get over the hurdles in life without a team--the body of Christ. Increasingly, American Christians are buying into the "independent" mindset. They think they don't need the body of Christ to succeed.

They unfortunately couldn't be more wrong. In Ephesians 4, Paul talks about the body of Christ being "joined and knit together by what every part supplies." We all hit walls in our lives. Some hit pride walls; some hit anger walls; some hit fear walls. But regardless of the walls we hit, we won't be able to get over them on our own.

So that, in a nutshell, was one of the main things I learned at survival camp. It's a hard lesson; I'm independent by nature, and I don't like to be told I can't do stuff on my own strength. But it's something we all need to learn.


Ephesians 4... well, I was going to pick a few verses from it, but since the whole thing is such a good "team" chapter, I'll just let you all look at it here.

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4:40 P.M. on 6/29/10 - I just realized that this is the 21st post and we have 21 followers... is that significant?