By: Jen Schuler
Psalm 145 says: “I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness. They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made. All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you! They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power, to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds, and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works. The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.”
There are certain rhythms of life that we come to count on as we order our days, the best of which draw our eyes and hearts back to the Lord so that we may worship Him more fully. Whether regular practices that define each week or traditions that come but a few times a year at most, we often gravitate toward that which causes us to draw near to the Lord and remain closely tethered to Him. The practice at Hume of ending camp with Victory Circle is just such a reliable rhythm of sorts. Victory Circle is simply a space dedicated to proclaiming to each other who God is and how He has revealed Himself in our lives. In large circles, we often focus on a few words to declare His attributes, and there is power in that specific praise of our Lord. In smaller circles, there is often room for the stories that surround the revealed attributes – details of how the Lord worked in specific circumstances to change a life for His glory or to make Himself more known. There is often a sacred vulnerability in the sharing of these stories that invite us to know God more fully because of the ways He continues to work in the lives of our fellow image-bearers. In many ways, Victory Circle represents a slowing down in the fulness of an experience to remember what the Lord has done and to reflect on Him together.
We find a similar pattern in Scripture of authors and psalmists declaring who God is as He reveals Himself in their lives in ways that can be heard or read by others, affirming attributes that He has already declared about Himself. For instance:
“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin….” – Exodus 34:6-7a
“But You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” – Psalm 86:5
“The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love”. – Psalm 103:8
“Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; our God is merciful. The LORD preserves the simple; when I was brought low, He saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you. For You have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living”. – Psalm 116:5-9
We recently ended this year’s Summer Staff Orientation at the Lake with Victory Circle, the same way we ended my first Orientation in 1999 and every Orientation since, and I suspect many more before my time began. Staff had the opportunity to declare the attributes of God, much the same as the psalmists in these verses. As I reflected on who our God is and His powerful work within those surrounding me in this familiar setting, I was struck by the difference in who I was when I first sat on those same seats, not yet actually knowing the Jesus I claimed to believe, and who I am in Christ today, His faithfulness to allow me to walk closely with Him for these 24 years, and the continued realization that He is doing it again – raising up this generation of Believers to know Him intimately, to love Him wholeheartedly and to walk faithfully with Him all of their days. The chorus of “Goodness of God” floated through my mind in the midst of this series of reflections, and I was moved to tears in a sense of worshipful awe: “All my life You have been faithful, and all of my life You have been so, so good; with every breath that I am able, oh, I will sing of the goodness of God.” It was one of those profound moments of clarity when I could see clearly the Lord’s hand over the entirety of my life. These years have held both mountain highs and darkest nights, overwhelming joy and deeply painful sorrow, victory and defeat, extraordinary moments and mundane seasons, but in all of it, God is faithful, and He is good.
Two weeks later, I sat in two much smaller circles of friends and strangers around campfires, hearing various histories with Hume as a means of introduction as we so often do when we gather. There is a striking consistency found in any circle of people up here in the depth of connection they feel to Hume if they’ve spent any length of time on the hill, and yet every person’s Hume story is different. Different people represent Hume to them as the important ones in their lives, different stories emerge that define them or define a generation of Hume (it can be within the same summer, and yet different stories stick as most important to different people), different traditions fill their days each time they visit, but one thing is always, always consistent for all who love this place: God did significant work in their lives here. He saved, He revealed direction for their lives, He anchored their hearts in such a way as to result in a decision to walk faithfully with Him all of their days, He gave them relationships that changed the course of their lives, He knit communities together in a summer or season that became family, He redirected, He drew them near yet again, He sought after a wayward heart until He had them safely back in the fold, He spoke, He whispered, He reminded them of who He is and he reminded them of who they are as His beloved children. Different people occupy the seats around the circles year after year, but God is always there, moving powerfully in their midst. Just like the Orientation Victory Circle, I was moved to a renewed sense of awe-filled wonder at our God as people shared how He had revealed Himself over time on these grounds…the rhythm of intentional conversation in a gathering of people redirecting my heart again to the posture of worship.
The Lord is near, always; places like Hume just seem to make it easier to sense His nearness. I’m sure that there are many reasons, but I think some of it is a combination of moving outside of the distractions of daily life in the regular world to a place that offers quiet spaces to hear His voice, and those Victory Circle-type practices of sitting together, intentionally declaring to one another who God is and how He is working in our lives.
“But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works”. – Psalm 73:28.
What a beautiful circle that the Lord creates of drawing us near, revealing Himself, and inviting us to tell of all that He has done, which in turn causes other hearts to draw near to Him! What a magnificent God we serve! In the consistency of this kind of meaningful tradition, the Lord continues to anchor my soul to Himself, reminding me of who He is and bringing me back to my first love, in some ways like the Israelites who made the trek to Jerusalem three times each year singing the psalms of ascent along the way. In these rhythms, He re-centers me. In the speaking out loud of His attributes corporately, the Lord washes over me the truth of who He is. If He is revealing who He is in your life and I know that He is unchanging, I can find assurance that He is who He says He is and that He will reveal Himself to be the same in my own life. Different circumstances, same God. In the pausing to reflect together, I slow down long enough to see His steadfast love and faithfulness in my life more clearly.
If you close your eyes and picture yourself sitting around one of Hume’s fires right now, what Victory Circle markers in your own life come to mind? Who is God revealing Himself to be in your life in this season? In what ways is He near? Could you let God stretch you this week by vulnerably sharing these reflections with a few other people around you and asking them the same questions…perhaps around a campfire, or a table, a living room, a patch of grass, or a park bench? Perhaps this particular piece of Hume could become a rhythm that shapes our days in our home communities, that we would live in the kind of perpetual, daily praise of our God and King described by David in Psalm 145, reminding each other of who He is, commending His works from one generation to another, and encouraging each other to fix our eyes and hearts on Him.
Jen and her husband, Joel, met on her very first day at Hume in the Summer of 1999, got married three years later, and have had the joy of serving on full-time staff since returning from their honeymoon. The Lord has given Jen a passion for building community, a deep love of the people of Hume, and a delight to pursue opportunities that allow people to gather in large and small settings alike. Though involved in a variety of areas, Jen’s favorite role is getting to be a stay-at-home mom to their three children: Ellie (entering her senior year of high school), Tommy (incoming freshman), and Abi (sixth grade)!