Why do we call LOG - LOG?
It seems to me that LOG is an easy way to remember that it means the Love of God. But more importantly, the LOG weekend is a way to perhaps experience, learn and share the Love of God in a new way or maybe for the first time in one’s life.
LOG - Love of God A tree log is sturdy. God’s love is always present and sturdy.
A log can join with other logs and be made into something new - like a log house. Living a LOG weekend can help to transform us into something new - with others - to become a family.
One log or many logs may be ignited to bring forth the fire. Living a LOG weekend may ignite us to be enlightened and bring the fire from within.
The LOG weekend is a way to begin to feel that Love of God through the gifts of song, talks, laughs, hugs, obstacles, tears, prayers, and just experiencing the unimaginable depth of God’s Love for us.
When we let God in our lives, we reflect His light and love to others and to the world. Sharing this new found Love God has for us needs and must be shared with others. The weekends are there to help others find this same thing we found by living and experiencing a LOG weekend. Where would we be if things stopped after LOG #1? That just causes my heart to be sad even thinking about it. Very sad. BUT, the joy is that it didn’t stop after LOG #1, it kept moving forward, helping to draw and bring others to know and experience this Love of God and now here we are at LOG #105 & 106.
My son, Adam, was invited to attend LOG #33 by his friend Andrea DeLonis (when she was in high school and not married to Marlon yet!). That weekend changed his life. As a mother I knew it happened because Adam was different and something profound had happened to him on the weekend. Adam has always been a person to laugh and share his thoughts with me. He went to church with me every Sunday and had his own faith journey going. But, he truly found and felt and experienced the Love of God on his participant weekend. I went to the closing, watched the slideshow of pictures, sang a few songs, listened to the rag story, and heard my son say how the weekend impacted his life. Adam did not want to leave the weekend after the closing ended. He wanted to stay with his “new family”. When we finally got back home he was exhausted and shared his experience of the weekend with me which lasted a long time. I felt the change in Adam, but he still had to go to school the next day!
After he went on that first weekend, he was involved with everything LOG did - was on team for every weekend until he graduated, went to vertical worship happenings, worked fundraisers, and was a co-leader when he was a senior. His friendships were real and his friends would come to the house to hang out, etc. He still went to church with me every Sunday and he was asked to give the sermon at one of our services before he graduated from high school. He lived his faith journey out loud! When he was a junior in college all of his LOG crosses hung in his bedroom windows as a reminder that God is always there.
Adam’s involvement with LOG helped to create my involvement with LOG. Terry’s invitation. It’s that invitation thing. The invitation to share this Love of God. The invitation that may perhaps begin the change in someone else, someone we don’t know yet (but God knows) to experience and learn that God is always there, they are loved and truly experience that Love of God. Sharing the Love of God with others, as you all and other teens have done with me, has and continues to have a profound impact on my life. My faith journey is strengthened through the talks, the hugs, being able to pray with you during Vertical on a weekend. The courage you all have to be willing to share, not only the good times, but the hurtful or painful times in your life, helps me to share my Love of God with all of you. It is so overwhelming sometimes that it chokes me up and tears are shed. I’m exhausted after a weekend, but refreshed in my love for all of you and my Love of God. The tears of joy that I shed is because you are willing to bring your Love of God even more fully and completely into my life. And the thing is, I know it can be this way with others, not just me. That is sharing the Love of God.
Nan Noecker - LOG #50
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