Best coffee part 5: Hidden jars in old halls

Secrets are powerful. If you know something deep and mysterious about someone then you have power in the form of potential energy, the blackmail type, a power that grows as long as you can keep the secret. Not all secrets are sinister though; girls giggle secrets of boys they like, and they too gain power, the kind that comes from being trusted. Some secrets are harmful, like the guilt of the past. They’re incredibly powerful. Some secrets contain the power to change lives.

The campsite was not your average Christian camp location. No mountains or soccer fields or tires to squeeze through and walls to slug over. Just a musty Convent in one of the murkiest areas of JHB. Instead of hearing rivers running or birds chirping we were treated to the tune of cars howling in the auto shop next door, accompanied by the wailing of the local Mosque. The place looked and smelled old, as though St Peter himself was on retreat there, back in the day. It’s rooms were decorated with paintings of those guys, the style of painting you only see on secret wallpaper revealed behind a smashed wall in an old hotel. The eating hall was a cramped wooden chamber with doors in the walls that could have led to secret Nun tunnels linking to the Vatican.

It was no ordinary Christian camp. Everyone who had ever been came back totally transformed but would never tell you what the hell actually happened. It was all a big secret, designed to protect events which contained power in surprise. It also made parents really suspicious. There was also a lot of tension between peers who never got to go, that kind of outsider jealousy on the one side clashing with prideful exclusiveness on the other. That whole ministry was one powerful secret.

And it really was powerful. I learned the secret of how God’s love is best displayed and authenticated and communicated through acts of service. I learned the power or praying in secret in a secret prayer closet all day long. I learned how releasing secrets can unleash the power of freedom. I experienced that transformation for myself, and then got to practice the power of service and watch it change others.

I also came to learn how draining this kind of love through service can be. Not the deep kind of draining, the one where the soul is leaking and only God’s finger can plug the hole. I mean the frivolous kind of draining, the one caused by serious lack of sleep and the energy depleted in trying to contain emotions. The kind coffee can help with.

And herein lay one of the best kept secrets: a jar of Jacobs instant coffee hidden behind a flowerpot on the top shelf above one of the secret tunnels to the Vatican. It was a secret between our Camp Mom and some of the higher echelons of coffee society, the kind of secret that has power in the affection transferred between the loving care-giver and a seemingly insignificant need. The power of small acts of love in service.

Thanks Mom Gail for all the secret coffee, and for authenticating the bigger acts of love with the smallest act of service, which in turn authenticated the biggest act of love where Jesus laid down his life for us.