A Prayer

 "If there's life on other planets, did Jesus die for their sins too?"

We're flopped on our backs under a brilliant net of stars, and the nature of this team quickly makes itself known. These kids, and their leaders, are questions and certainty, faith and doubt all tied up into the most intricate and beautiful of knots.

Theology and missiology, soteriology and dating. Our nights are filled with unanswerable questions and open handed issues as kids present their cases and admit their sticking points. And, in a way that is unique to this team, our days overflow with more of the same.

Pulling weeds and moving rocks is a perfect time to talk about Calvinism and Arminianism. Long van rides are for discussing prophecy and tongues, the recent socio-polital history of Haiti, and some of the finer points of what it means to honor and hold space for your spouse.

They teach each other how to solve Rubik's cubes and sudoku puzzles, discuss the age of the universe and arguments for a local or global flood. And, occasionally, they fall silent, and the journals make their way to the porch, and they introvert together, reading out an important line from a book or passing a puzzle that has them stumped.

On the basketball court, they watch each other like hawks, absolutely determined that we will not have a repeat of last year's adventures. The returning girls walk back and forth with me, arms full of Nalgene bottles that are scooped up and refilled almost as soon as they are emptied. You sweat hard, you take electrolytes. You feel sick, you tell Jessica. Take breaks, sub out, push hard, but remember that we still have a week yet to go.

VBS after VBS with kiddos who want nothing more than to see your face spark to life the way that it does when you see them. Hours of chase and beach balls and made up games. Wires to be twisted around rocks and skits to be performed. Songs to dance to, hacky sack to play, and endless streams of babies and little ones to be picked up, held, rocked to sleep, fed crackers, or played peekaboo with.

The 'thing' that we've come to do is slower this year, smaller, and our kids respond with the same gentle honor and courage that they work so hard to show each other. Play with snapchat filters and let their phones be passed around by small people they have just met, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have your camera roll filled with selfies or group shots with a finger halfway through the screen. Color pictures. Filter inside when it gets too hot to sit quietly and play hand games until it is their turn at crafts. Play outside games that echo back inside the building with shouts and laughter, because, sometimes, duck, duck, goose and shoulder rides are competitive sports.

Shine with a peace and joy that transforms every moment of putting others before self into a pure act of worship.

Washing water bottles. Saving plates of food. Quietly guarding the steps, so that conversations can be held secure and private. Basketball games at six in the morning. Unloading and re-loading lumber and sheet metal. Being early to the gate for a sober family meeting on the way home. Playing a giant game of chess or snorkeling at the resort. Getting a haircut. Trying genips and fresh sugar cane. Worship becomes an action, is an action, the thing that you would give up something for.

Wake up early to sanitize hospital beds and sand walls before breakfast. Stay up late to sweep and wipe down floors by hand and then to mop them and then mop them again. Move equipment, pick up trash, sanitize and sanitize and sanitize some more. Dislocate a shoulder or get mowed down on the basketball court and pop back up to try it again. Circle up tight on the roof when we've had a night with all of the emotions and sing until until the guitarist's fingers are raw.

Lay hands and pray over each other 'Haitian style,' with twenty-one voices layering over each other in a constant stream of sound, because there is One Who Hears. One Who Hears when they are frustrated because they expected it to be harder, and One Who Hears when they didn't expect it to be this stinking hard.

One Who Hears their faith and their love, their doubt and their questions, their unity and their hurt, their beauty and their mess.

One who watches them more carefully than they scan the night sky for shooting stars or threats of rain. One who knows their goofy comments and their honest conversations long before the words fall from their lips. One who has been preparing their hearts for this thing, this messy, beautiful jumble of an easy, hard, sleep deprived, throw your expectations out the window, sort of a thing.

We're caught up somewhere in that tension again, somewhere part way between fear and peace, just far enough along to see Faithfulness in the road that we've walked, but still tangled up in the darkness and the violence of our own humanity.

Because, there are nights when 1:30 in the morning is beautiful, star lit, gentle, honest. Nights when it is painful and terrifying. Nights when we talk circles around ourselves only to admit that we don't have a stinking clue. And, nights when we simply do not sleep at all.

Days when we work for more hours than there is daylight. Days when we play in a brilliantly blue ocean, and days where it is enough to join in on the dedication of a partially finished surgical center.

Because, really, none of those days are as simple as that -- and none of those nights are either. Sometimes there is snot in the face masks and ugly dead patches in the coral and jelly fish that want to sting you. Sometimes play days have some of the most serious conversations, and sometimes work days are the ones where finger jousting occurs.

We fall. We misstep. We fumble our way through bringing a new youth pastor along on this journey and through reaching back to find closure for old stories. And, somehow, we stumble our way into astounding, sacrificial Grace in the midst of it all.

Because, right here, right now, on this planet, Christ walks beside us.

And, that is enough.