Last weekend we went on our first retreat to Selah Ranch. It was a really good time. We had sessions Friday evening, Saturday morning and evening, and Sonday morning but had all of Saturday afternoon and the evenings to do whatever we wanted. Selah Ranch is a lovely place near Mt. Vernon, TX. It has some open ranch land and a fair bit of wooded areas. We go back in October and I’ll try to get some pictures then. I forgot this time around.
Friday evening’s entertainment consisted of a “Miss Selah” contest. Only we skipped everything but the speeches. Each person had to speak for thirty (30) seconds on a random topic. Simple enough, I’ll grant you. But the catch was that everyone else in the room had a water bottle. Any poor grammar, long pauses, “um,” “uh,” “like,” “you know,” or something similar meant you got sprayed. My topic was Michael Jackson. Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about him other than he is dead, was a singer, and was very, very weird. I managed pretty well through that part of the speech. Then I didn’t know what to say next and the squirting commenced. I quickly changed topics to that of knowing what your speech is supposed to be about. That lasted the final fifteen seconds or so.
We also played a version of the “fruit game” where instead of a fruit everyone had a sign or signal that they had to pass silently about the circle while the middle person tried to figure out who was trying to signal. There were a few glitches when people lost track of who was signing or thought they’d been signaled when it was an accidental movement. Highly amusing.
Saturday we went golf-carting. A bit like four-wheeling in a golf cart. That was a blast. My cart went cross-country a lot because we were in the back and kept trying to catch up (they kindly waited for me to get my shoes on before they took off). We hit some serious bumps and ended up dragging branches along underneath our cart even when we got back on the road. Two other girls traded out driving while we were in the woods and then I drove on the clear ground. We lost a rider while I was driving. I was just chasing the other carts trying to catch up and then I heard someone behind me say “We lost Andrea.” Seems that we had hit a large bump and she just flew off instead of trying to hold on. So we backtracked and picked her up again before setting out on the mad chase.
On a more serious note, I really enjoyed listening to our speaker, Susan Banks. She spent a lot of time discussing not only what living in faith, repentance, and forgiveness looks like, but also what it doesn’t look like. It’s almost easier for me to identify what those should be like when I know what they aren’t. And it’s definitely easier to see the areas in which I do not measure up to God’s standard. Where I sin. I’m still struggling with figuring out how I apply all of what she said though. Now that I know what forgiveness is not, and what it is, how do I live it out? That I do not yet know or understand. It’s easy to sit and listen to someone talk about forgiveness. It is hard to actually forgive. I know I cannot do it of my own strength, but what does forgiving out of God’s strength look like? How do I manage that?
Last Monday night when Tommy Nelson was talking about Genesis 4-5, I was struck by the fact that Enoch and Lamech lived at about the same time. And Noah was only a few generations later. I’ve known what the Bible says about the earth being sinful beyond compare at the time of Noah, but realizing that Lamech was around about that time lets me see a bit more of the defiance toward God that was happening then. And it astounds me how different Cain’s line and Seth’s line were. One believed God and the other, well, didn’t.
The biggest “Oh” moments though, came when we were going through Genesis 3 and listing all the things that were cursed because of Adam’s sin. Some of them were obvious, like the ground and cattle. Then we came to the “your seed” and “her seed.” “Your seed” I’ve always just attributed to Satan. But it’s not. It’s us. Prior to Christ, before salvation, we are called “children of wrath” (Eph 2:3) and sons of the devil (John 8:44). Thus we, humanity, are Satan’s seed. Not a pleasant thought.
The antidote to that, of course, is “her seed” which is Christ. I knew that. But it never registered that it was right then, at the fall, that Christ was cursed for us. “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’)” (Gal 3:13). But it began before that, back in Eden. As Tommy Nelson put it, “Adam sinned and God hit Jesus.”
That phrase has been echoing through my mind since I heard it. It makes sin so much more personal when put that way. “Brittanie sinned and God hit Jesus.” He didn’t hit me. I cannot grasp the depth behind it. “It was my sin that held Him there [to the cross]” runs one song we sang at the retreat. I sinned and God released His wrath on Jesus instead of me. It’s almost scary. But I think it should be, in a way. I need to be scared by the reality of the awfulness of my sin toward God. We all do.
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