Camps Farthest Out messages on the subject of Love.
Home » The Library » Subject » Love
Bertha Jarrett tells the movement about a French coworker who resented her simply for smiling too much. A small pamphlet called “How to Change the Other Person” showed her that only love, not argument, could reach a hurting person. She closes by describing a butterfly kit she was given. She watched a caterpillar’s crumpled new wings unfurl inside its chrysalis, and she compares the process to what that same love is doing inside every camper.
Bert Kerley asks whether “God is love” can still be true in the face of tragedy. He recalls a Welsh mining disaster that killed sixty schoolchildren, and a young pianist who said she thought of everyone who loved her as she played. He gave this talk on trusting that love has the final word to the Northern California CFO in 1982.
Alex McCullough asks campers “who is they?” and answers with two encounters from before he was even a Christian: comforting a homeless man in Manhattan and a trembling kitchen worker newly arrived from the Caribbean. Fear sees “they” while love sees “us,” he insists, and a true congregation, unlike a mere aggregation, becomes one. He preached it at the 1988 Southern California Healing CFO.
Three young people came off the street to a week in the camps, and Ruth Robison tells what happened. Vera’s arm was swollen, and Robison prayed over it after midnight; Vera later took communion for the first time. Russell handed her the loaded pistol he had bought to end his life. She turns from there to the small disciplines of the Holy Spirit, among them “invest in your expectancy.”
At the Annual CFO in 1967, Bertha Jarrett opens to the third chapter of John to explain what it means that “now are we the sons of God,” already one with each other and with Christ. She tells campers about a man in India who stops a policeman from striking a beggar by saying, “my brother, you are hitting yourself.”
Earl Tyson tells of a wounded Emmaus ministry teenager who said she felt like “white water on the inside” that people were trying to dam up. Her healing shows, he tells the Minnesota Koronis CFO in 1990, that authority and wholeness only grow out of knowing you are loved.
Bernie Warfield tells campers at the Ohio CFO in 1960 that they are “sitting on a gold mine,” the divinity buried deep within. Spiritual growth cannot be forced, he says, like a hatching chick that must break its own shell or die. He calls suffering God’s chisel, shaping a person into the likeness of Christ.
Norman Renshaw points to a dead tree that three men wanted to clear away that morning, and finds in it an unexpected picture of resurrection. He describes four years spent repeating “God loves me” and, harder still, “God loves him,” until his resentment toward a deacon who had confronted him finally broke. Speaking to the camps, he sets Eros, the Greek god of love at Piccadilly Circus, against the self-giving love of the cross on St Paul’s Cathedral. He asks which one campers actually serve.
Johnny Johnson describes a mysterious officer who calmed rioting sailors aboard the USS Kitty Hawk and then could not be found when the crew was lined up afterward. Speaking to the Florida Family CFO in 1985, he uses the story to define love as forgiveness acted out, not just felt.
John Hobbs Jr. tells the campers that his own father’s rule, “it’s his job to spoil them and God’s job to fix them,” pictures a heavenly Father who wants to be enjoyed, not just obeyed. At the 2002 Florida Family CFO, he connects that picture to his brother and sister-in-law’s grief over their stillborn daughter, saying the Father grieves with those who suffer unjustly.