Shut the Door!

SDAs!! Camp Meeting season is finally over. Phew! For those of us who aren’t so excited anymore about camp meetings, we’re glad it’s over because the pressure of the next TikTok challenge or the next “big choir” is gone. Woe unto us who can’t (or don’t want to) sing in the choir!

Anyway, I don’t want to sound too pessimistic; camp meetings are always a wonderful season. They are six-plus weeks of thanksgiving, prayer, friendship, singing, and dancing. Oh, and the food! You cannot separate SDAs from great food. It’s always a bittersweet feeling when the camps end—especially on the last Saturday of the last camp meeting. More often than not, it’s my main church’s camp that wraps everything up. It used to make me so sad, to the point of tears, when my church’s camp ended on Saturday and I had to be on the road at 6 a.m. the next day, heading back to school. Aah high school was the worst. But I’m glad that phase of my life is over.

This time, the last camp was again my church’s. Because of other obligations, I couldn’t attend any other camp during the season. I only managed the last three days of ours. The preacher’s theme for all his sermons over those three days was: “Shut the Door!”

He was speaking from 2 Kings 4, the story of the widow who had only a pot of oil in her house to pay her debts—or else her two sons would be taken as collateral. Imagine that: your children seized to be slaves to pay off a debt. The Jewish system could be ruthless.

When the widow brought the prophet Elisha to her house, he told her to borrow as many vessels as she could from her neighbors, then go inside with her sons and shut the door. The preacher emphasized how sometimes it is important to shut the door to the blessings in your house. How sometimes one needs to shut the door when seeking a one-on-one consultation with God. How sometimes we must shut the door to negativity around us: to bad friends who could corrupt the good in us, shut the door to the crushing weight of debt, to consumerism and unhealthy appetites, to frivolous distractions, and even to men or women who would ruin our relationships.

As a minimalist, this theme of shutting the door is one I fully relate to and embrace. It helps me shut the door to the modern malady of endless consumption. Among other things, “Shut the Door” was a powerful and fitting end to camp meeting.

What do you think you need to shut the door to in your life?

Chat me.

✍🏽Reagan.