Sunday reflection; the Earth is a campground.

My friends and family all know how much I enjoy camping.  Every weekend of the summer not spent at a campsite is a missed opportunity to me.  Unfortunately I have other responsibilities and too small of a budget to be camping at every opportunity.  Fortunately it came up in the sermon at church this morning though and managed to get my attention, which is good considering the service has been moved to 9:30 am for the summer months and I often feel like my eyes need to be propped open during the service with toothpicks.  Pastor King’s sermon at St. Luke Lutheran in Ottawa this morning was based on the Second Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, Chapter 5, verses 1 to 2.  “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”  The Pastor basically said that while Christians are here on Earth, we’re just camping out, sometimes things go good in life, sometimes they don’t, but we can be rest assured that when our time on this big campsite is over, we have a home in Heaven.  The Pastor also explained how life is indeed a lot like a camping trip.  There are seemingly perfect days of good weather and good company in the outdoors.  There are also days of rain, severe thunderstorms, or unwanted visits to the camp by raccoons and bears, but the good part of it is that we always can return to our much more solid and dependable homes.  It reminded me of the week I spent at Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park in Northern Ontario last summer where it rained for all but one of the days I was there.  The area around my tent completely flooded.  I was fortunately able to take refuge in my parent’s trailer.  There was the time at Grundy Lake Provincial Park near Sudbury five years ago when a big thunderstorm with heavy rain roared through.  The tent I was using had seen better days.  The old thin nylon was no defense against the downpour.  A friend fortunately had a giant tarp with him and we hastily covered the tent with it while lightning struck uncomfortably close by.  The final resting place for that tent was park garbage dumpster.  On two occasions, one recently at Presqu’île in Ontario, and the other a few years ago at Mactaquac in New Brunswick, I also had two nearly very smelly incidents involving a skunk.  On those rare occasions, proper discretion took over and I didn’t react with panic or force.  

While as a Christian I believe there is a life after my time on this big campsite is over, even non-believers acknowledge the indefinite time we all have on Earth.  We’re just camping out.  Get along.  Love everybody, work together, look after the place and leave it in good shape for the next person to occupy the site.