You Live and You Lug

By Grant Gaines

At the Christian sports camp I work at (Kanakuk Kamps) we have five changeover days every summer-out with last term’s kids and in with the new batch of excited campers. Changeover day at Kanakuk is the tail of two related but completely opposite experiences.

For the campers who are pulling into the gates, there is nothing but energy, excitement, and high expectations for what the next two weeks will look like. As the bus lets the kids off, the campers immediately whip across the lake on jet skis, fly down zip lines, race down a massive slip-n-slide, bound off of high dives or soar on a trapeze into the pool as the kids rekindle old relationships with fellow campers and are introduced to new friends and their counselors. One word sums up this opening day experience for the campers-“awesome!!!”

However, back at the buses where the kids got dropped off to go enjoy their nostalgic adventure, there is a completely different experience that is occurring. While the kids may have run off the bus using their own two legs, their luggage doesn’t have that same luxury. It needs someone to move it in order to exit the bus. That’s where a small group of elite staff members comes into play. I like to think of them as the “Seal Team 6” of Kanakuk Kamps. Others know them more commonly as C.I.T.’s or “Counselors In Training.”

These are the guys who just graduated from high school so are too old to be campers but are still too young to be counselors. C.I.T.’s work alongside leadership staff as they learn the ropes of what it takes to bare the honor of being a counselor in the summer. They work hard, play hard, and lift a ton of luggage.

I use the word “ton” strategically because on changeover day, I bet they all lift close to a 2,000 pounds each (2,000 pounds = 1 ton). While the campers are down in the main part of camp running around without a care in the world, the C.I.T.’s are hauling their trunks which range anywhere from 50-110 pounds in the relentless summer sun for hour after hour until all the luggage arrives “magically” at the camper’s cabin without the camper ever having to lift a finger.

While I understand that we are trying to promote good customer service by helping the campers get their luggage down to their cabins while the kids have fun, I do wonder from time to time when I pick up a trunk if the load would be significantly lighter if we made the campers carry their own trunks to their cabins. I think it might actually be good for the campers to learn the important lesson that what you pack now, you’ll carry later.

That statement doesn’t just apply to campers and luggage, however. It applies to all of us. What we do now, we will deal with later. Or to keep with the luggage analogy – what we live now, we’ll lug later¹.

Galatians 6:7-8 (NIV) says this much when it informs us, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please the flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”

What this verse is telling us is that what you do now will come back to revisit you again in the future – whether that’s a good or a bad thing.

If we’re busy living for the moment and indulging in any and every pleasure that our eyes see, we’ll pay the price in the future. If you always allow yourself to eat whatever you are currently craving, you’re going reap the result of excess weight. If you allow yourself to give into impure sexual desires, you’re going to reap the penalty of guilt, shame, and a broken view of what God’s gift of sex looks like. If you run to others to find your satisfaction, you will reap the consequence of emptiness and loneliness when you discover that people can never satisfy like your God-given purpose can. What you live now, you lug later.

Conversely, if we continually practice discipline, purity, integrity, honesty, love, and generosity, Galatians 6:9 goes on to promise us that we will reap a bountiful harvest if we do not give up. What we live now we lug later.

Every move, decision, and impulse that we practice now is a weight that we put in the trunks of our lives that we carry with us for the rest of our time here on earth. Some of those decisions we make will reward us in the future, others will disappoint us. Regardless of what we do now, we can be sure that we will reap the consequences or rewards later.

Is the way you’re living right now going to be what you want to lug later?

¹This idea of “what you live now, you lug later” is adapted from Pastor Levi Lusko