Camper Rules for Life

[Steve Myers] At a camp for children, I sat down with the kids and tried to figure out what should our rules be for camp? I told them, “I’m going to let you decide what the rules are.” And so they started raising their hands and coming up with all kind of different ideas like, “You shouldn’t pinch your friend”, you know, “You shouldn’t kick them”, and we came up with this whole list and we started drawing them out – we came up with about five pages of different things – that you shouldn’t leave trash on the ground, and all kinds of things. But then as we began to think about it, I tried to get them to try to summarize all of those various kinds of things, because there were different items that talked about how we treat each other. There were different items on how we treated things. And then there was the important aspect of how we treat our relationship with God.

And so as we thought about it, we were able to summarize all those – probably over fifty different rules – into one word. You know what that one word was? It was “respect”. It was “respect”. Because how we treat each other has to do whether we respect them. How we honor God reflects how we respect Him. And how we treat property also comes down to whether or not we value those things.

And so it’s an important concept for all of us to keep in mind, that idea of respect. It’s a critical thing. And over in the book of 1 Peter, we’re told that this is a key element in our mindset. 1 Peter 2:17 kind of summarizes this whole aspect of respect. Peter writes, “Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.” So in a way, it’s almost like those children at our camp, summarizing the way of God all down to one word. Can we make that our goal every day, to be sure that, whatever the situation, we make respect a vital part or every aspect of our life?

That’s BT Daily. We’ll see you next time.