Another WCB Summer

I couldn’t imagine a better way to conclude this year of adventures then another summer at Wilderness Canoe Base.  I am very excited about summer number two of guiding trips in the Boundary Waters.  I have a deep love for this place and I cannot wait to share it with even more people this summer.  Last week we broke our staff up into three different groups and went on a four night staff trip.  My trip started off with a 515 rod portage to Paulson Lake and we spent our first night on Tuscarora lake.  We then paddled on to Cherokee Lake where we spent nights two and three.  We all enjoyed having a quiet layover day full of napping, swimming, paddling, and laughing.  The following day we ventured along the Frost River and made our way up to Little Sag.  Our final day we woke up at four in the morning and paddled all the way back to Camp on Seagull Lake.  I had a blast on our trip and loved seeing some lakes that I had never been to.  We did 56 portages in all.  Staff training has come to an end and our first group of campers arrive tomorrow!

Our theme for the summer is the upside down story.  We will be doing daily Bible studies with our campers focusing on some parables.  While working on my programming I have fallen in love with the parable of leaven bread.

“What shall I compare the kingdom of God to?  It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”       –Luke 13:20 & 21

As I planned this Bible study I began to think about what I know about the kingdom of God.  One of the first things that I thought of was the line in the Lord’s Prayer that says “thy kingdom come…” Martin Luther explains this line in the Small Catechism by saying that “God’s kingdom comes indeed without our praying for it, but we ask in this prayer that it may come also to us.  God’s kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us his Holy Spirit, so that by his grace we believe his holy Word and live a godly life on earth now and in heaven forever.”  I love this description of God’s kingdom simply because it reminds us that God’s kingdom always has and always will surround us.  God’s kingdom exists without our participation, the baker has already mixed it thoroughly into the dough (and how great is it that Jesus uses a female baker as a surrogate for God in this parable!?).  This parable suggests that the kingdom enters the world as its creation.  The kingdom of God is forever with us, it is mixed in with everything that we do, and similar to yeast mixed into dough it can never be removed.

I hope that you experience the Kingdom of God this summer, no matter where you are.

“For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” –Colossians 1:16 & 17