by Deacon Dana Nearmyer
As part of the recently unveiled new diocesan organization structure, I will be moving from the role of director of evangelization to the full-time camp and advancement director for Prairie Star Ranch.
With over 50,000 campers and retreat participants having deep personal encounters with Jesus Christ, we have learned a lot about creating environments where conversion is likely.
The Prairie Star Ranch is excited to export the x’s and o’s of creating environments in all phases of life where conversion is likely. Theology names God’s unquenchable desire to saturate all phases of our existence with his love as the primacy of grace.
Primacy of grace calls each of us to recognize that our breath, every ounce of truth, beauty, goodness, and community, or oneness, that we experience comes from God.
We can close ourselves off and deny that God cares, and yet he continually showers our lives in truth, beauty, goodness, and community. God floods each of us each day with his presence, and he wills our good, always. God floods the space that we give him, a thimble or an ocean basin.
Are you giving God a thimble or an ocean basin? If you are a parent, are you framing what is referred to as the economy of salvation, the way salvation works, in the light of primacy of grace? Are you nurturing the souls of your children to embrace the sacraments, foster and witness deep intimacy with the Lord, and encourage dependence on the Lord, as the bedrock of our meaning and purpose?
As we approach Good Friday, and we process forward to venerate the body of our Lord on the cross, I find the complete, sacrificial gift of Christ’s broken body on the cross to be my best daily reality and fuel, as an individual, spouse, father, grandfather, deacon and co-worker. We can become an experience where conversion is likely just to encounter us.
We have no excuses for ego, pride, and boastfulness, while venerating his broken body. There’s no excuses for being lazy, slothful, apathetic, and unmotivated in front of the Calvary cross. Good Friday is a foundational day that says even though the darkest of days come to us all, our God is with us; he seeks us even to the point of being shattered for us, and he takes us with him through the night to the morning of his resurrection.
Prairie Star Ranch invites you to bring your family, or send a child to camp, and to ask God to open your heart like an ocean basin.
