The theme for Passport Choices for our youth and for Passport Kids Camp this summer is Wide Open Spaces. It is an inviting and exciting theme for Passport! It places before us the landscape of God’s love.
When we imagine wide open spaces, we might picture a mountain landscape with a river running through it. There is space to explore and wander, discover and wonder! We might imagine children running through a field or youth camping next to a lake. There are endless possibilities in wide open spaces like the possibilities we find in the love of Christ.
Passport will invite our children and youth into wide open spaces like the palmist saying that God will bring us to a “broad place” where there is refuge and renewal. In a wide-open place, there is room for welcome, where we are surrounded by God’s grace. Out of this welcome we can respond to God’s love by serving others or celebrating with joy.
Our prayer for our children and youth, as they travel to Passport at the end of June, is that they find themselves in the wide-open space of God’s love. The practice of retreat, or pilgrimage, is as old as our faith. It is taking a journey, where we can go to a “broad place” of refuge and renewal to re-engage with God. We step outside of our lives to focus on the love of Christ, so it can speak to us and shape us.
As our children and youth, and their chaperones, travel to Passport, we are thankful for their experience! We hope they build community with one another, experience God’s love in a wide-open-space, and they return to Auburn with stories to share with us. They go with our prayers and our love, as they enjoy these formative experiences.
-Tripp