Camping Follies | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Camping Follies | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jan Ackerson
07/12/05
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Family Camp has been an annual tradition in my denomination for decades. Although the campground now has internet access and there are more gleaming motor homes than canvas tents, Family Camp is essentially unchanged from the camp meetings of my great-grandparents’ time. The music is spirited, and people under the huge striped tent sway to the beat and lift their hands in praise. Women fan themselves and their young children in the evening heat. An evangelist exhorts believers to deeper faith, and penitents approach the makeshift altar to kneel and weep. New Christians are baptized in the lake, emerging from the water with glorious shining faces.

Over the years, I have experienced both brokenness and victory at Family Camp, and many moments of surpassing peace and sweetness. But my most precious memories of camp meeting are those that I recall with laughter…

Many years ago, my husband and I were pitching our tent on the first day of camp. We had brought plenty of books for our precocious 3-year-old, who watched with waning interest as we wrestled with canvas and poles. Somehow, during the setting-up process, her books wound up in the sand. In a useless attempt to keep her clean, I asked Megan to leave them alone until her daddy and I were done. When her patience with our labors was spent, Megan asked in a voice loud enough to be heard by the conference superintendent several campsites away, “Can I read my dirty books now?”

A few years later, we were fortunate to be assigned a campsite adjacent to friends from church whose children were nearly the same ages as ours. The restrooms were a few hundred feet away, down a rocky path. One evening, 7-year-old Jared came limping and whimpering to our shared picnic area. “What’s wrong, honey?” asked his mother.

With a marvelously misplaced modifier, Jared replied, “I stubbed my toe while I was going to the bathroom on a big rock!”

Finally, one year a young pastor from our conference was asked to give the opening prayer for the evening worship service. Nervous to be praying publicly for such a large congregation, he stumbled a bit. With every intention of asking the Lord to help us to meet His expectations, the young minister intoned, “O Lord, forgive us for our falling shorts!”

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