Some thoughts from the Mana Pools Men's Camp

Amazing places, amazing wildlife, amazing people and an amazing God: these are the things I'll think about when remembering our trip to the Mana Pools Men's Camp in Zimbabwe this July. And 'amazing' is a terrible understatement.

One of the most incredible things about the Mana Pools camp was the way in which you couldn't separate the spiritual side of the weekend from the other activities we did. Being out in the wild with no walls or fences to insulate us from the rest of God's creation made me realise exactly how closely physical realities out there can mirror spiritual realities in our everyday life.

The camp was designed as a time of physical and spiritual rest for all of us: our Zimbabwean brothers were separated from their daily troubles by the Zambezi Escarpment, a range of wooded hills setting Mana Pools apart from the oppressive atmosphere looming over most of the country. I was more than 2 000km away from home and took the opportunity to seek God's presence and ask him some questions about my future. He answered these by pointing to the wonderful complexity of his creation all around me, and refreshing my wonder at the small corner of it that I study: the way we humans use our God-given capacity for language to convey so many ideas and attitudes, to fight so many struggles in an infinite variety of ways.

I was also reminded powerfully of the reality of the struggles we fight, not "against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world..." (Ephesians 6:11). At Mana Pools we had to be constantly alert, watching for dangerous animals who could be lurking anywhere. A talk we had on avoiding sexual temptation was interrupted when a lioness walked through the campsite. A scripture came to my mind: "Be careful! Watch out for attacks from the Devil, your great enemy. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for some victim to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). I have to keep on watching out for spiritual attacks, especially at home in Grahamstown where I least expect them.

God taught me a further great lesson through the lives of the people we met at Mana Pools and on the way there and back. We had gone to Mana Pools partly to encourage our brothers from Zimbabwe. We blessed them by bringing up groceries from South Africa for the camp and also simply by being willing to come there and show that they were not isolated from the rest of the body of Christ. But they encouraged us far more by their living testimonies of how their faith had grown through suffering. We saw how the troubles in Zimbabwe have caused some to grow bitter, but others have depended on God for all their needs, and he has met them in miraculous ways. Some have lost everything and forgiven those who took it from them. Others graciously shared food and fuel with us, even though both are in short supply. One of the Bible study sessions was on learning to be content in every situation, following the example of Paul in Philippians 4:12.

For me, the scripture that summed up the lessons of the camp was Job 38, where God answers Job's questions about his suffering with even more questions: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?... Who defined the boundaries of the sea?... Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east?" and so on and so on. God's magnificent creation shows us that he is firmly in control of our circumstances, unlike us, and so we can trust him in every situation. While we may not be able to comprehend the reasons for our suffering, he does, and he can help us through it.

And, as James says, "when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything" (James 1:3–4). God is looking to develop that strength of character in all of us, so we'd do well to learn it from nature and from the example of Christians growing under pressure in places like Zimbabwe.