The Way That Leads to Light {A Post by Tony}

The woman walks towards us wearing nothing but short shorts and a red bathrobe emblazoned with gold dragons. 

The bathrobe is completely open, her mouth is slack and her eyes are stagnant pools, lifeless.

I catch the eye of the two older kids sitting behind me.  My quick glance sends out the message, “Ignore it, don’t draw attention to her.” 

It’s an eleven passenger van; that leaves 9 little ones that don’t need the shock; they’ve seen enough already I’m sure.

My mind drifts back to earlier in the week; I was driving by myself.  A woman, mid-twenties, in a canary yellow jean romper, riding an old BMX bike, stops next to me. 

Her make-up is beyond done up, and her hair is in little-girl pig tails.   Tracks race up and down her emaciated arms. 

She lifts her eyebrows at me and I imperceptibly shake my head and we both pull away from the stop sign, headed in opposite directions.

While I’m getting a haircut I ask the barber, a local church attendee,  “Hey, is it just me, or are you seeing a lot more prostitutes than usual walking around?”

 He pauses, then nods, “Yeah, definitely.”

If this upsets you then ask yourself the question,  "Are you looking at pornography on your phone, or reading some mainstream erotica novel? If so, what’s the difference?"   

There isn’t one.  You’re just as chained to filthy rags as these.

I tell kids the same message - sin comes from our nature, we desire to accomplish injustice; it looks good to us.

In fact, this excuse is used throughout the Bible,

Genesis 3:6

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

Judges 14:3

…But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.”

Joshua 7:20

And Achan answered Joshua, “Truly I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I did: when I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels, then I coveted them and took them.”

I don’t read Bible stories anymore and think the way I did when I was young, “What’s wrong with these people?” 

I read Bible stories now and think, “I’m what’s wrong with people.  I’m inches, seconds, whatever measurement you prefer, away from making the same mistakes.”

A kid I hired at Starbucks once asked me, “Hey Tony, my dad used to be a really strong Christian but now he’s on trial for rape. What happened?"

So I told him, “The second you put yourself outside of God's will and start to think that you know better - it might be today, or 20 years from now - the downward spiral begins.  Eventually you’re far enough outside of Jesus' will that you end up suffering consequences.  Irreversible consequences by human standards.   You hurt not only yourself, but your whole family.”

I love, as much as it breaks my heart, that Achan clearly articulates his sin. It’s not against Joshua or Isreal, or even his own family, but he says, “I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel.”

I used to run all the time in college. Mostly I was praying and sometimes I would end up doing five miles or more, simply caught up in the process of giving my thoughts over to God and I would forget about the physical pain from the exertion. 

Once in mid-run I was crying out to God about my ‘thorn in the flesh’ and the answer came to me so clearly that I stopped dead in the middle of my run. 

I had been asking God why I had to deal with this reaccuring sin, and the answer went something like this, “This ‘thorn in the flesh’ is not from Me, it’s from you. You’re intentionally sinning because you desire to do what is wrong. You want to sin and you’re making excuses to justify your sins.”

I can’t say working that out was easy, but God’s grace was sufficient.

John Milton, in Paradise Lost says, “Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell, leads up to light.”

Some sins we struggle with are like that. I have no idea how it feels to know I can’t stop stealing.  I have never stolen anything; I have no desire to take other people’s possessions.  In fact, I’m afraid I might get their germs if I do.  However, if coffee was outlawed, like it was by a Pope in Rome in the year 1600, I’d be a first class criminal!  I’d be dealing and making all kinds of excuses to my clients and cops about how, “Government can’t regulate me, man!”

This is humanity - we want our own way, and we’ll be damned if God’s love would EVER send us to hell! That’s just not right!

Look at your sins and ask, “Is this a thorn in the flesh or am I doing it to myself?”

The answer is often so bitter and self-effacing that like the rich young ruler in Luke 18, we become very sad; it’s difficult to look at a situation where we know we’ve been wronged and say, “This is my fault too.”

The only way out is humility, and I must confess that they only time I’ve ever had any, is when I asked God to give it to me.

I’ll sign off with this, my go to, super deep, theological prayer: “Dear Jesus, I am such a despicable mess, I cannot escape who I am without Your love. Please help me.”

If it works for you, feel free to use it. 

For When You are Small and in Need

I drive the roads that connect our two destinations, coffee in hand, while their voices fill the space behind my head.

Two properties wait for us, filled with animal-life that my girls get to care for while the younger two and I sit in the shade with panting dogs and tumbling kittens.


Here, there are no sirens filling the air.

Here, I can close my eyes and breathe deep.

Here, I take advantage of these quiet spaces while my girls walk with purpose to carry out their responsibilities.

Here, I cling to Peace.

I glance over and watch his profile. He is telling me some story while his eyes are on the road.

His hand reaches over occasionally to brush my own, his eyes beckoning me to run my fingers across his sun-kissed neck.


We leave the crush, the heat, of the inner city and wind through mountain roads to beat the bus behind us.

It is filled with children.

I imagine their loud voices filling the air behind the one driving. After meeting him briefly, I can only imagine he is smiling.


There are no sirens out here.

There is Peace.

And we become surrounded by the grins of our campers as they come tumbling out of the bus.


The inner city has the tendency to harden the old, yes, but also the young.


I watch that hardness begin to fall away from some...

The nurse leaves Thursday night, and I take over, her phone number in hand.

I didn't think I would need it,

but I did.


Two girls, so quiet, come to me with their troubles, and I place the call asking what I should do.

I step back into the room and as I kneel down, tears begin to fall down the face of the older one.


We leave for home the next morning and all day the symptoms have been flaring.

They are preparing for the environments they have left and any hardness that was stripped away is being flung back on.

It turns into rebellion, talking back,

sore tummies and hurting heads.

This gift of time is running out and they begin to fight against it.

A counselor comes down and whispers to us:

A small boy in his cabin refuses to come in, curled up on a couch and grabbed onto the  arm rest, burying his face in the cushions. He won't let go.

"He's safe where he is", Tony says, after a moment, "Let him fall asleep there. Let him grieve."


Sometime during the long night, he is covered with a blanket and he rests.

Working here, alongside staff and counselors, has stripped away preconceived notions and ideas of what camp "should" be.


We are a small group, desperately asking for help from those outside of us, praying for each volunteer who would say *yes* to giving of their time to serve those in our community.


The mountains gave way to hills, the forests to sage brush as we turned the van back towards home just before lunch last Friday. I voiced the question I had been mulling over all week,


How are we going to do this?

And Tony, the one who wrestles with God and who has been wounded. Who voices the hard questions and trusts that God will supply every answer, reached over and took my hand.

This morning, I kept thinking of Gideon.

And then he smiled at me.


He knows, I know.


Jesus, He is gracious. He speaks the words we most need to hear, because He is the Word.


He knows that we are in need to order to make the Senior Kids Camp run.

He knows that we are understaffed and tempted to be overwhelmed.

He knows that nearly every phone call has been met with an apologetic, "I'm sorry. We can't".

He knows.


Then the Lord said to Gideon, "There are still too many troops..."

Taking Gideon from twenty-two thousand men, to just three hundred, God defeated the enemy hell-bent on destroying His people.


The enemy looks different here, but it is just as real. There is a war going on around us, our eyes just don't always see it. Drugs, gangs, prostitution, trafficking - these are the weapons that Satan is using to destroy the children we are here to serve.

At times, it all feels too big and we feel too small.

And we are.

However, our God is unfathomably large.

Our last camp of the summer is happening July 31st-August 4th. The group of us feel our smallness. We are praying that the Lord supplies just a few more. Our greatest need is for female counselors, aged 16 & up with a relationship with Jesus, who are fully aware that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces of heaven, willing to stand with us, pray with us, fight along with us knowing that our Jesus will strengthen and equip us for every good work.


Our prayer is that God would be glorified in this camp. That He would move and that these days away from broken environments would cause His Light to be brought back into our communities - both in the areas viewed as good and in the ones that are viewed as beyond repair.

That our eyes would be opened to the truth that we all are in desperate need of Jesus and only He can bring the peace we long for.

Please call Bob Whitney at 509.594.9185 or Tony Baker at 509.480.2102 for more information.