I woke up at 9:30am to no alarm, three missed calls, an abundance of texts, a voicemail from one of my campus ministry friends, and a sore throat.

We had a campus ministry day retreat planned for the Saturday of the weekend. We would leave 8am from campus, go to a friend’s farm in Luray, hang there and do various activities, and be back home before evening.

Funny, how I’d put an administrative message in our group message “hey everyone, please arrive at 8am so we can try to leave on time” and I’m the one who completely slept in. My alarm hadn’t gone off; I was awake by my brain’s own will. My brain was freaking out, though and I was awake for sure when I started to throw my stuff together and get ready to leave.

This is probably the shambliest I’ve been all semester.

I asked Josh if he’d take me to Luray and he very graciously agreed because he’s a saint. So off we went, the windows down and classical music blasting as we sped drove responsibly down the highway.

We passed through Skyline Drive–stunning–and wound around some mountains until we finally reached the farm.

It was THE CUTEST thing. So gorgeous.

We pulled up to everyone else waiting there on the porch it was slightly intimidating.

I thanked Josh, kissed him goodbye, and then proceeded to join everyone inside the house. There, we started a bible study looking at the passage where this rich guy rolls in his riches while he’s alive while Lazarus agonizes alone on the streets, covered in boils and sores.

The rich guy dies and the tables turn– Lazarus finds a home in heaven and the rich dude ends up in hell, facing the torment that could be likened to Lazarus’ time spent on earth. The rich dude sees Lazarus in the Lord’s lap of luxury and calls out “hey wait! Can someone please warn my brothers who are still alive? Tell them to trust in the Lord and all that stuff, maybe send them a sign or something so they can believe and escape the fate I got here?” And Moses is all like “oh, well, they’ve got the prophets and the scriptures, if they have faith in them and adhere to them, they should be good. But you’re now reaping what you’ve sewn…oh, and if your brothers aren’t already paying attention to the scriptures and the prophets, no kind of sign I could send would get them to believe.”

And so.

This stimulated a whole discussion about trust, why and who we trust [or not], a discussion about faith… It’s great because we literally just talked about our experiences and scripture for like, an hour straight, in the cutest farm house EVER, in the most PERFECT weather possible… with incredible people all circled in a room.

It was like I hadn’t missed anything.

We went on to do a trust walk– blindfolds happened and we were led around the yard of the farmhouse, trusting in the person leading us and reflecting on it afterwards.

This was followed by a hearty lunch and A Game For Good Christians, which is LEGIT a church-goer [or spiritual] version of Cards Against Humanity and it’s HYSTERICAL. Our priest can actually play with us without feeling guilty, because all of the white cards have a reference to scripture on them LOL

We then had a really small version of the Eucharist, called an agape [I believe?] that was mostly collective prayer based, followed by some pictures and then we all headed back.

It was such a nice relaxing way to spend the day, especially after that morning frenzy.

I was so glad I went, so glad I was able to just revel in God’s goodness– from the people there to our lovely surroundings.

It can’t get better than that.

xx