One thing is certain every year at Vision Quest: in some combination, there will be blood, sweat, and tears. Without fail.
Laguna Beach, Florida, is usually a calm, relaxing destination on the Gulf of Mexico, sitting just far enough to not be sucked into the Spring Break Fever of neighboring Panama City and its adjacent beach. Volunteers For Christ (VFC) has been coming to this stretch of beach for years. The scene rarely changes. The M.O. rarely changes. The schedule rarely changes. The people may change every year, but the one thing that remains the same over the many years is that God always shows up. As with any human, God loves the beach (He did create it after all) and every year always makes an impact, even for someone that has gone three or more times.
Vision Quest annually serves as the ideal respite between a cold (relatively speaking....by Tennessee standards) first couple months of the spring semester and the warmer, yet more stressful, second half of the term, when papers, finals and wrapping everything up comes up fast. For a week, there is nothing but the soft feeling of (mostly) smooth white sand between your toes, the (cold) break of the Gulf of Mexico waves, the welcoming rays of the sun (undisturbed by storm clouds, or any clouds at all), the always breathtaking reds and oranges of a Florida sunset and, more importantly than anything else, about 150 of your closest VFC friends. It's a pretty epic combination. Simply epic.
Sure, it's awesome being on the beach, being in Florida, being away from the daily grinds of college. What is more awesome about this special week is being able to focus on fellowship--with God, with old friends, with new friends. It's a time to grow, to reflect, to realize what God has done in life over the period of time where the common Christian might not have paid much attention to during the busy rest of life. Listening to preaching from one of Cornerstone Church of Knoxville's many wonderful pastors, worshiping, and hanging out create an environment that is comparable to little else that at least I have experienced before.
Life is full of seasons. Times, chapters in our lives which take us for a spin on the roller coaster of life. As a veteran of Vision Quests past, it is amazing how effective the week is every year. The season of life during this week stretch always has seemed to be different each of the past three years, yet every year, there is a similar feeling of awe that comes out of it. God and His word constantly strikes me in some way or another that makes it always enjoyable and enriching to hear and learn. Sure, 1,862 pictures might tell a detailed account of the week from Sunday to Friday and may give a surface-level sense of what all we did in Laguna Beach, but the emotional and spiritual fill that come as a result transcends any amateur photograph that I could take.
The peace, the love, the joy, the serenity that leaves on the buses with 150 college students is a feeling that is not natural, counter-cultural maybe. In the chaotic garb of everyday life, a new trend of peace floods the soul. It's a soothing calmness, a desirable gift that is definitely something the average person does not or should not take for granted. In a season where the upcoming year is full of unknowns, question marks, and a flight or two across the vast Atlantic Ocean, it is amazing to feel the peace that I feel. Everything will be okay because I think God is in control. Simple, maybe. Cliche, probably. Yet I feel awesome and not stressed because of it. That's a rarity.
