by Julene Hannesh
This past summer, PoP Rocks (our High School Youth Ministry) spent a week camping along Minnesota’s North Shore—sharing life together and deepening our relationships with God and one another. Our days were filled with hiking through state parks, eating meals lovingly cooked on camp stoves, and rotating who got to pick the music in the van, and our evenings were spent around the campfire, playing games, and lingering in conversation.
Each night, we gathered for devotion using God in the Wilderness by Rabbi Jamie Korngold. The book invited us to reflect on our relationship with creation and our place within a vast, messy, beautiful, and imperfect world—one that God lovingly calls us into. This invitation did not end when the trip did. It continues to shape our conversations and our faith as we returned home, calling us to live with greater care, curiosity, and commitment to the world God invites us to love. We are invited to notice God’s presence in the world around us, to care for creation and one another, and to live out the faith that was nurtured in the wilderness. We invite you to join us in this work, as together we listen for where God is calling us to love, serve, and care for the world we share.
