So neat as a pin and organized to a T, this adorable camp house is perfect to remind me of everything in its place and a place for everything. It’s a playhouse that’s real. A tea party with real tea. A house made into a real home by the love that poured into it and the love that emanates from those withing. A weekend retreat for me and some of the girls, I am so blessed to have even gotten here. Mental break of putting life issues on a mental shelf for later. Not forgotten but stored. A place for everything and everything in place. Life is best realized when you realize your blessings. Set aside strife. Count your blessings and never run out of things to count! Most of all, COUNT ON GOD. 

How heavenly to know that our needs are realized at camp and to reduce the number of wants with a weekend away. A dry roof over our heads, sturdy structures away from the wind, these keep wildlife at bay while you sleep, and yet camping as the walls are thin enough to hear the summer bug’s last serenade. And thank God it is quiet enough to hear the quiet. This is camp enough to feel the balance of nature. We are but travelers in this world. And yet we are connected enough to be in 5G networks. We are safe enough to know safety. Love the image of the rafters exposed and solid, so you KNOW exactly the structure keeping the structure is solidly in place. We are to know blessings enough to count blessings. 

Heaven, I am told and I can imagine, surely is like this, we will KNOW Who is keeping us all solidly secure.  Heaven holds all our needs conveniently close, like including a WAWA store on every convenient corner. More importantly, life in Heaven HAS less needs, if any, probably none – just wonder and love. Only our need is to be THANKFUL and share our JOY in WORSHIP of GOD. All life-strife driven as far away as to be non-existent. Heaven follows God’s Order and Plan and leaves nothing to chance. We think of Heaven as something for us and our loved ones, but it’s truly created for God’s fellowship with us, so that He can know our company – and us His. Heaven holds where we finally know and worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. No wonder He made us from dust and knows every hair on our heads. Everything in His place and a place (His place) for everything. 

Not everything in life is so neat. My house I am constantly trying to put in order: the structure, the stuff, the sentiment, the souls. My life blessed but many folk’s lives are so very broken and complicated. No, not everything is complete or “neat on earth”. We are in a broken creation of broken creatures. Many don’t know the Lord or even to look. We are also often insulated in our blessings from knowing others who have it way worse. Our house walls too thick and our eyes short-sightedness. The strife, the unknown, the fear, the folly of the unwise, the waste of the unwanted, the worst uses of time. The creation is groaning for the restoration that will come around the corner. Like a camp that DOESN’T go quiet in the off-season, there was and is NO RENEWAL. Life grinds and wears thin. 

HEAVEN WEARS STRONG. Hope in His Healing. Heaven is where the heart and heads hold-together and humans are healed of humanness. The eventual quiet of the camp out of season, when no people remain, stands a testament to the TRUTH that GOD NEVER CHANGES. The stars still shine. The air still breathes, the peepers still peep. Heaven on earth IS a big part of the Lord’s prayer – and that’s BOTH our prayer to the Lord and the Lord’s prayer for us. To bring Heaven on earth and be realizing and ready when Heaven renews our world, Heaven renews itself. His Will becomes His Way “on earth as it is in Heaven”. A place for everything and everything in its place. 

At camp, we keep the homefires burning. God keeps His Fire burning our hearts and burning in our sights. God crackles thru the worst of times and shows us hope.

God says be always thinking of Home. “… and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.” Like Moses leading to an earthly Promised Land, God leads us HOME. Everything in its place and a place for everything. 

TAKE A CAMP MOMENT TODAY and BREATHE CLEAR – PRAY in GOD’S WAY – for PEACE to come on earth, as it is IN HEAVEN. 

Amen

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For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.

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Believers Who Have Died: Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words. 1 Thessolonians 4:7-8, 13-18

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What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?  Deuteronomy 4:7

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The Lord Is God (Moses instructs the Israelites)

Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire. Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.

Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time. Deuteronomy 4:18-40