Scrolling through Facebook. Scrolling through Twitter. Scrolling through Instagram. Watching a few seconds on Snapchat. The list goes on of the monotonous activities we do throughout our day. I am not sure if we ever really know what we are looking for. However, amongst the many things I scrolled past a few days ago, this picture caused me to stop, stare, and share what I saw with my wife.

This is a photo of Jack simply looking at the cross. He and his mom were on a walk through grounds and she pulled out her phone to snap a few pictures of her son. Jack found the cross worth taking some to pause and stare for a few seconds. There is nothing fancy about this photo. It wasn’t shot with a real expensive photographer’s camera; it was shot with an iPhone. It was not edited in a fancy program and it does not have a fancy filter put on the photo. This photo is simply as raw as they come.

So what’s the big deal about this photo? Well I found a few things at my initial glance.

1. The awe of the Cross 

   “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” – 1 Corinthians 1:18

   
   Maybe you have a cross in the church you attend, or maybe you have a cross as a piece of jewelry, or maybe you even have a tattoo of a cross somewhere on your body. Either way, there is something powerful about the cross. It amazes me how the very “tool” that was used to kill Jesus can cause us stop like this.
   
   It is not the piece of wood we marvel at, rather we marvel at what it means and symbolizes. For it was on the cross that Jesus, the sinless Son of God, took on the full weight on our sin (past, present, and future) so that we would be freed from the power of sin (Romans 8:2). Christ also gave us something on the Cross – righteousness (a right standing before God). Jesus, through his death on the cross, allows us to stand before a perfect, holy, and righteous Father – sinless (Jude 1:24).
   
   Makes me think we should stop and ponder this profound message a little more. We could learn a few things from Jack it looks like. 
   
   

2. Our prayer for Kids

   Our prayer is that everyone who comes on our grounds will expereince the power of the Holy Spirit and come to an understanding of what Jesus Christ has done on the cross. We pray that for our retreat guests, our outdoor education groups, and we are currently praying this for all the campers walking on our grounds during our summer programs. 
   
   As camp counselors, we have no clue what God is going to do with the ministry that is done over these next ten weeks, but we pray that they will leave with the awe of the cross on the front of their minds. We pray they will get connected to a local church and someday publically profess before other borthers and sisters in Christ that Jesus is Lord of their life.
   
   

So we pray that it would not just one kid that stops and stares at that cross, but we pray that the hundreds and thousands of people that walk past it will find the awe of the cross. We pray that you will continue to find awe in the Cross of Christ!

To God be Glory...