Every Spring, we take our students on a Spring Break trip to InterVarsity’s Campus by the Sea on Catalina Island. For a week we live together without data plans and cell service, eating three meals a day, taking a shower here or there, studying the book of Mark and prayer, and enjoying the gentle breezes of the Pacific Ocean and the way the humidity makes all our hair just a little more full.

I believe chapter camp is one of the best things we do in a school year. InterVarsity chapters from all over the Rocky Mountain and western coast get together for this week and grow closer to Jesus. We give our students the opportunity to DEEPLY study the book of Mark and let it change their lives.

For the second year in a row I taught the first half of the book of Mark with my coworker, Kosmos. I love working with him because we are constantly laughing, learning, and praying together. We both share a deep care for our students and long to see them meet Jesus in a new way. It was really fun to have another Mark camp with him, delighting over all the ways God was at work.

During this week, we always give our students the opportunity to answer the question: Who is Jesus to you? By the end of our time on Catalina, not only are we a family, but Jesus is the ultimate brother, father, and friend to us. This year, Kosmos and I had the privilege of teaching a group of eight freshmen and sophomores. We lead sessions together, and switched off days to give each other breaks and help the students engage in different ways. It was a lot of fun.

I am hesitating to share many details of what happens in “Mark 1” because we don’t want to give away the fun applications and life-changing truth bombs that the week in Scripture has to offer. We just assure our students that it’s a worthwhile way to spend their Spring breaks. So here’s what I will do: I will share how last week changed my life forever.

And so far, chapter camp has changed my life forever every year that I have attended. But this year, it was something new and different.

During one of the sessions Kosmos led, we studied the passage when Jesus talks about wineskins (Mark 2:18-22). This has always been a passage that I have to read and learn over and over again because it’s a very contextual metaphor that Jesus uses. First of all, I don’t love wine as it is, but also we don’t use wineskins here in America. The idea though, is that if you pour new wine into an old wineskin, it will burst. New wine needs a new wineskin to hold it. So much of the first half of Mark, Jesus addresses the state of people’s hearts. During this particular session, Kosmos had us compare the old way of the Pharisees (with their values and traditions) and the new way that Jesus offers (that centers around caring for people where they are at and the state of our hearts.) As I wrote down the differences between the old way and the new way, I was struck by how much I was like the Pharisees. And they are the old wineskins in Jesus’ metaphor. They are trying to hold fast to their traditions that are so beyond the law, that when Jesus dials it back, and brings them back to God’s heart, they are unable to handle it.

I realized in that session that God had been trying to pour his new wine into me for the past few years, but I had burst and was a leaking, rotting mess. I haven’t believed for a long time that I deserved to be given a new wineskin. Like the Pharisees, I have always tried to earn my way to salvation and righteousness. Jesus came however, so that he could make me righteous, not to pat me on the head for all my self-made goodness. In my attempts all these years to be good enough, I have failed again and again, and consequently built up a ton of shame over who I am as a person.

But as I relearned last week, in Jesus’ dealings with sinners, he loves them where they are at and brings them no shame. He heals them in the midst of their faith that he is God and capable. Example after example of broken, hurt, and dying people coming to Jesus in desperation showed me how Jesus deals with those who live in shame. He stops and takes the time to hear their hearts and heal them. He invites them into a new thing. I have never looked at myself as someone who could approach Jesus like that and that he would respond the way he does to these people. I have been blind for so long in my reading of these Scriptures that Jesus was inviting me to have faith in who he is as God and ask him to make me new, give me a new wineskin, if you will. So I took my own step of faith, reached out for Jesus’ cloak and asked for that healing. I confessed to my students my shame and sin, and asked for their prayers, believing that Jesus wanted to give me new life, a new heart, a new wineskin.

And gone is my shame.

For the first time in several years, my desire to be good enough is shrinking and shame is no where to be found. I am free.

I love working for InterVarsity because there are endless opportunities to grow closer to God and take care of my soul and let God restore me. I love that we have a deep commitment to the Word in this organization- a commitment to seeking the truth in the Word and living it out. After a week of life-change and growing closer in relationships with my students and coworkers, I am in awe of all that God has done for me up to this point.

Why does He love me so?

Honestly, I can’t wrap my head around it- but his love is the point. The reason for his love isn’t the point, it’s the love itself. He just loves us. Not because of who we are, but because he made us and wants us. That’s it.

I am so glad that I get to be a part of this upside down Kingdom!