A Tale of Two Feet: Remade

I've been gone since Friday afternoon because we had our ministry team retreat this weekend. As a student involved with ministry teams, the retreat was always my favorite part of the year. It's such a great way to start the year - we get away from school, up in the mountains, and if you walk away from the weekend not knowing Christ better, than something is wrong. Each year the retreat has a theme and project that goes along with it, and it's all set up by a movie, which we watch together Friday night. This year the theme was Remade and the movie is The King's Speech. Throughout the course of the weekend we learned that despite our sin and brokenness, Christ has remade us, making us worthy to be His children and calling us to spread his Glory. The project is always worked on in stages, and when we gather for our last session on Saturday evening, the project has been completed, but the final product is a surprise for the students until that moment.

For the first part of this year's project everyone received a bottle, slips of paper paper and a Sharpie. All of the bottles still had their labels on them and it was up to the students whether or not they wanted to take them off. Then we were supposed to write different sins, struggles, fears, or negative ways we viewed ourselves on the slips of paper and drop them in the bottle.

During the second session, students were given magazines and Mod Podge, Sharpies, and paint markers. We were supposed to cover the outside of the bottle with the truths about who we are in Christ, now that we've been remade. Then the students turned the bottles back in and Samantha and I went to work on them.

We attached bulbs and light shades and turned them all into lamps. Even though you could still see all of the junk written on the paper inside the bottle, the outsides were beautiful and had a new purpose, to shed light. And that's just like us. Yes, we still have lots of junk in our lives, but Christ has made us beautiful and given us a purpose. We covered the stage of the Big Top with candles and the new lamps, and when the students walked in for worship the got to see the finished product, and it was a beautiful sight! It was so neat to see them all together on stage because every single bottle was different and represented a different story. And I love knowing that all over Johnson City, in dorm rooms, houses, and apartments there are now beautiful bottles that have been remade into lamps!

Below are some shots from worship last night, and the bottle that I made.