September 8 | Psalm 25:4-5

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DAILY READING

Psalm 25:4-5

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REFLECTION

Show Me Your Ways

By Pam Mann

During my elementary school years, there was a kids’ essay contest at our church. I don’t recall the essay topic, but the prize was a week-long stay at a Christian youth camp in Fulton, Ohio. Our working-class family didn’t camp or hike. As a suburbanite, my experience of the great outdoors was limited in blackberry picking in the small woods of a yet-to-be developed area near our house. I didn’t know a lot about hiking on paths nor how to choose the right one.

Then, I won that essay contest. I spent a week at the youth camp that summer and for several summers after that. I was the first one in my family to attend this camp. As a middle child, I was rarely first in the family to do anything. Going to this camp felt like a great privilege. My parents told me to think about what I was getting out of the experience because I would need to write to the church council and tell them in my thank you note. I felt myself like an emissary from Cincinnati exploring the distant reaches far north on I-71.

At the camp before every meal, we lined up by cabin group in front of the main lodge. Above the porch of the lodge, burned in a lacquered pine plank, were the words of Psalm 25:4.

Show me Your ways, Lord, teach me Your paths.

Since I had plenty of anxiety about this outdoor experience, this verse on the lodge really resonated with me. I needed help finding my way through this week. Neither my older sister nor my older brother could help me. They’d never been here. I needed God to show me the way.

And what an adventure I had! All day long, every day, there were activities and discoveries: morning calisthenics, hymn sings, crafts, diving lessons, nature hikes, wading

in the creek, nighttime campfire singing, daily worship in an outdoor chapel, to name a few! The girls in my cabin were from all over the state. One girl lived on a farm near a far-off place called Bucyrus. She collected eggs from the chickens, could milk a cow, and could husk corn faster than her brother. Plus, she wore cute, flowered tops that her mom had sewn from feed sacks! Though her life was very different from mine, she sang out of the same red hymnal every Sunday that I did. Her little Lutheran church sounded a lot like mine. Wasn’t it an amazing thing that God could show people His ways and teach them His paths, though they lived in very different settings?

Whether we were strategizing on how to pass cabin inspection or encouraging each other on the high dive, we laughed our way into a supportive unit. We studied the Bible together and prayed for each other. It was my first experience of being known as myself alone, not as someone’s little sister. I realized that just as these new friends saw me as an independent person, God also loves us uniquely, individually. He sees us and knows each of us. So, I had no difficulty in writing my thank you note to the church council about all the week had meant to me.

Then, years later, as a college freshman, I learned that I could apply to be a cabin counselor at the same camp that I had loved as a kid. I applied and was accepted. The same Psalm 25:4 sign was still above the entrance to the lodge. I enjoyed being a cabin counselor as much as I had enjoyed being a camper. And... God wasn’t done showing me His ways and teaching me His paths. I became close friends with one of the guy counselors, Dave Mann, whom I married a couple summers later.

And isn’t it sweet that we never age out of God showing us His ways and teaching us His paths? He always has more for us in each new season of life. The adventure continues.

PRAYER

Thank you, Lord, for shepherding us through life. Keep our eyes wide open for what’s next as we walk with You.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PAM MANN

I first joined UALC when my husband (then my fiancé) and I were college students involved in youth ministry. God has used UALC to nurture our family’s faith, even in our years outside the U.S. I’ve participated in UALC ministries with kids, art, prayer, exercise, ESL, and Bible teaching. I do all the fun church things.