Let the Enemy Remain by Ryan in Oregon
Fellowship in the Spirit is a great gift from God. Thanks to His goodness towards us He gave us the gift of friendship and we were accompanied today by a friend of Wonder Voyage, Fr Brandon Filbert. We started our day with Fr Brandon by sharing in a Eucharist at his home church in Forrest Grove. His congregation provided us with a great lunch afterward and then we headed out for our new day of adventure. After spending some time on the road we came to a place known as Devils Lake. This stagnat lake is unswimmable due to pollution and toxins, and yet there are numerous houses and landowners developing all around it. It seemed like a strange place to bring the team, but Fr Brandon knew his reasons why and quickly brought out the spiritual significance of a place like this to the pilgrims from St Columbas.
He explained, as many of us know, how we all have places like Devils Lake in our own lives. Places that we never want to reveal to others and places that we never want to bring before Christ. We allow these places to fester and they never change. They might be issues of the past, issues that we can't seem to overcome in the present, or maybe issues we are afraid of in the future. The point is, and the challenge was, to not keep the places like Devils Lake in our lives hidden from Christ. Fr Brandons challenge was to invite Christ straight into them. Don't try and keep them from Him, run to Him with them.
As we headed to our campsite on Devils Lake for the evening we all took some time to reflect on Fr Brandons test for us, and we all prayed that we could be courageous enough to come to Christ with all of our fears and all our shame.