conceal

For He will hide me in His shelter in the day of trouble; He will conceal me under the cover of His tent; He will lift me high upon a rock. (Psalm 27:5)

It’s Shelter Week at Journey Academy as the heroes engage with learning and doing focused on shelter.  As we journaled about and discussed this week’s verse from Psalm 25, we noticed the word “conceal.” As they thought about a tent, they discussed how someone builds a tent versus finding shelter.  We discussed how God prepares things for us.  The IS heroes are preparing the IS studio.  Having picked out the color purple heart, the heroes continued to shape the emerging Intermediate Studio.  As they were painting, they brainstormed the idea of a service project involving a retirement home.  They are consistently thinking about how to make this place their own.

There’s a quote from Star Trek that came to mind this week during Kingdom Time.  “Survival is insufficient.” It’s true that we need to learn to survive.  But in the Kingdom, we are meant to flourish. Survival is insufficient.  To flourish, we also need Kingdom skills like forgiveness.  The heroes have learned about the practice of forgiving others as well as asking for and accepting forgiveness.  As they wrote private sorries on index cards, we placed them in a small campfire and discussed that Psalm 103, I reminded them that as far as the east is from the west, so their sorries have been taken away by God.  It’s these kind of practices that move us toward sufficient.

Peggy Kalis gave a hero talk this week on finding food as part of survival.  Toward the end, she modeled for the heroes how to fillet a fish and then coached them as they filleted the tilapia on the table in front of them.   A skill that might have been concealed from them for a while, became real and attainable with Peggy’s help.

The ELS ended the week by documenting what they had learned about shelter.  My favorite is found in the upper left. “Choose your location wisely.”  As we uncover what has been concealed and as we conceal ourselves in Him, may we all choose our locations wisely.

//Dr. T//

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