.capture.

I have the answer to the question. Not any sort of important and/or significant question, but rather the question asked by a dear friend last week at church. She asked me the most important lesson I'd learned this summer. The pastor at my church finally brought this lesson to my attention: love. Love is the answer to the question. Although it seems like such a simple and extremely obvious answer, it is the most important thing that allowed me to survive the summer. :) I suppose I should have learned this from the first week of kids' camps this summer....living with eight 8-11 year old boys with Down Syndrome will TRULY test anyone's sense of patience and love. While I think about how absolutely crazy/non-stop/chaotic this week was, I can only help but think about the happy memories and the hilarious comments from our boys. For every crazy/ridiculous thing that our boys did, I can only help but to love them a little more because they are such WONDERFUL children of God. This morning at church, our pastor gave an AMAZING sermon about creating a "rebellion of compassion" in the US.
There was a skit portraying two different families' reactions to seeing another family who had a child with a disability. One family complained about the child's behaviors while the other family accepted the child and invited her to play with them. Seeing a skit like this REALLY brought to life the reality of how my campers live on a daily basis. They are the ones catching the attention with their out of ordinary behaviors. The pastor brought in the "rebellion of compassion" by relating this skit to the story of Jesus raising the widow's son, found in Luke 17. The sermon focused on finding the people who desperately NEED to be loved on and how we can do it. This week seemed to focus a little bit on individuals with special needs, as our church has a very large ministry, dedicated to children with disabilities.
The following questions were posed at the end of the sermon:
-Do these people capture our attention, or are we blind to them?
-Do these people capture our hearts?
-Are we willing to do something our of the ordinary?

AHHHHHHHH. This sermon just blew my mind. It was simply a confirmation that I needed to hear. Although this summer was MASS chaos, I wouldn't have traded it for anything. Given the opportunity to love on these children, I couldn't have asked for anything different! Learning to love like Jesus has been a lesson I've truly experienced in my summers at camp. :) I thought I would quote a lil' Chris Tomlin right here from his Hello, Love album:

Love is the answer. Love will find a way. When we love one another, it's a brighter day. <3