The Labyrinth was one of our most significant spiritual practices we experienced this summer. While we were kayaking the Owyhee river and in the middle of nowhere, I grabbed a few leaders and we took an hour to construct this maze on the beach. I got the idea from a post over at Rethinking Youth Ministry.

Labyrinth is simply a tool to slow down and contemplate your journey with the Lord. As your walk in you think about the things within yourself that you want to give up or let go of. The path brings you toward the center where you spend time with the Lord. And as your journey back out, you think of the things you will take with you from your experience with God.

Our kids really grabbed on to the whole metaphor and had some pretty impactful experiences.

To build you own you can go here and here.

I was talking with some kids this week and none of them could say that they’ve experienced God in any tangible way. So I told them a story of a healing I’ve experienced and said that there are many more to share from other believers. So do you have any stories from your lives that made you say that God was real?

You post ‘em and I’ll read them to the students Wednesday.

Somewhere over the Rockies we fly over this turquoise oblong lake that lies amongst the mountains. The surface is smooth, calm and I imagine there’s no one around for hundreds of miles.

I will find that lake someday. It’s somewhere north of Provo, where Utah meets Idaho. I will find it and swim out to the center and say that I am nothing. Just a tiny speck amongst giants. But the one that created all of this, the peaks and the valleys, He knows this nothing. He knows where I am. And that creator is big, bigger than anything these eyes can see from horizon to horizon. He is big and yet he knows nothing. He knows nothing by name. He is my Father.

And as I swim out in the turquoise deep, I know he can hear me, past the myriad of mountains, past the vastness of this earth. He says I am with you.

I’m like Zacchaeus in a tree going higher to see my Lord and king. Only it isn’t a sycamore, it’ more like some scraggly pine. Either way it holds my weight about 30 ft off the ground. I sit here in Colorado on a mountain top watching the sun rise. Slowly at first - but oh what a release of light. I am surrounded in the joy of the creator, the sound of creation beaming before me. Oh what a dreamer the God I serve is. A master painter. An artist in light. Oh praise him. He is holy, mighty, and has a beautiful imagination.