Biola University First Year Student Journals

Frost, Forest, Floor... Action

November 14, 2005 | 10 comments

With my dry, winkled, and numb fingers fumbling around the pockets and zippers of my duffle bag, I was beginning to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into. I frantically tried to tear apart my bag to get to its precious contents: sweatshirt, beanie, and pants. Now at an elevation of 7,000 feet, enveloped in pitch black darkness and falling victim to lung freezing, 30 degree weather (don’t forget to factor in wind chill- this was one icy night), I was far away from the Biola campus I had learned to call home for the past few weeks. Along with about eleven other guys from my floor, I now existed among the vast mountains and forests of Big Bear, the southern part of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Somewhere between getting lost for an hour and fifteen minutes (not all of us, only my car), trying to establish a fire, lay out a tarp and fight off hypothermia, this floor retreat was supposed to be fun. Don’t get me wrong. I love the rugged outdoors. Camping is right up my alley. However, the conveniences of light and heat are always welcome. About fifteen minutes later, I finally found myself safely snuggled in my sleeping bag, trying to squeeze myself onto the perimeter of our 15X15-foot tarp with ten other shivering comrades.

As much as my account of the first night might have misled you, the weekend floor retreat turned out to be a great—I’ll even say incredible—experience. Each semester, our floor takes a weekend retreat: an opportunity to escape the pressures of schoolwork and to refocus our hearts and our minds. It is an opportunity to get to know more people who live on the floor, isolate ourselves from school and the city, and to remember the importance of daily devotion, prayer, and time in the Word. We also try to enjoy a bit of God’s awesome creation here and there. And sometimes, stabbing your heart with needles of ice and losing fingers to frost bite is a part of that.

After slowly returning to consciousness after a night of sleep, we unpacked our boxes of rations for the weekend. We ripped open some bags of cereal, doused them with milk, and experimented with some skillet potatoes and hot chocolate.  Never before have the fragrances of chocolate powder and garlic been so satisfying.

The rest of the weekend, we spend time napping on the dirty banks of a private lake (but to be honest, it was more like a pond), hiking around the trails to different lookout points, and playing trust-building games, such as a blindfolded hike, human knots, and other bizarre activities I’m sure don’t even have names. Yet, it was Saturday night that truly made the weekend worthwhile. It was this evening that we fulfilled our goal and purpose for the entire trip: to strengthen the unity of our relationships, and to commit ourselves to lives of integrity. Christian (yup, my adopted roommate) opened us in a bible study of Proverbs. We then spent the next three hours sharing our testimonies, our weaknesses, our strengths, and our ambitions with one another around the crackling firelight. As we closed in worship and prayer that evening, our RA left us with the challenge of integrity. A man after God’s heart does not simply try to live with integrity; he must prove himself to be a man of integrity.

Going to such a respected Christian college like Biola, I have been immersed in deep thoughts and teachings in my few weeks here. Yet these more complex topics don’t always grasp and change people the way simple truths can.

Besides great memories, this retreat brought me a reminder of something I already knew: that studying the Bible for classes does not substitute for personal isolation, devotion, prayer, and study of the Word. Compulsory assignments, although they teach great amounts, have not filled my inner hunger in the same way reading the Truth, analyzing it, recording it, researching it, and praying about it has. For any friend of mine reading this who doesn’t practice this today, I hope that my lesson is an example.

As the piercing sun slit the curtains of our eyelids on our last morning at Big Bear, we were forced to groggily stumble to our feet, clean up our pine-and-shrub home, and depart back for the city. After we loaded up, started the car and backed out of the paved parking pad, I glanced one more time at our site. Forty-eight hours amongst these hills of rocks and pines had changed us from distracted, self-focused college students to enriched and disciplined believers.

As great as my floor and my school is, there is always room for improvement. That Sunday, eleven young men embarked to initiate such growth, both in our lives and in the saints and sinners around us.

Journal Entries

• A New Home
• Frost, Forest, Floor... Action
• Spiritual Approachability
• Bounding With Bounders
• Cracking The Ice
• A Sight for Sore Eyes
• Saturday Night Fever: The New Way to Hit the Town

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