When I was a boy—I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a “model camper.” Put me and my twin brother, Tom, in one cabin with 6 other boys, add a shared sense of humor and miles of Adirondack woods, and trouble finds you. I won’t say which summer or whose idea it was (probably his), but it ended with us hanging our heads as we trudged back to the cabin. We thought we’d really blown it for good that time.

The strangest thing was that we hadn’t blown it. The consequences were real, and they were fair. But the next summer we showed up at camp, and nobody brought it up. A counselor shook our hands like any new arrivals and asked what we were excited about that week.

That’s what Northern Frontier gives a boy: room to try things, and room to fail at them. Every summer, some boy freezes halfway up the climbing tower. Another capsizes a canoe fifty feet from the dock. Another scorches the first dinner he ever cooked over a fire. A few need to learn lessons the hard way. The best of us only need to learn it one time. But at camp, nobody gets shamed for it. They get helped up, dried off, and pointed at the next thing.

What I learned as a camper took me years to put into words, but it’s that being forgiven and being known can happen in the same handshake.

Now I’m on the other side of that handshake. Our counselors look forward to last summer’s boys returning. They wonder who’s coming back and how much taller he’ll be. They can’t wait to find out, and they’re ready to encourage him and to forgive whatever weight he’s still carrying from last year. I get to watch them do for other boys exactly what was done for me.

In John 21, we see Jesus forgive the apostle Peter. He had denied Jesus three times while warming his hands over a hot fire. After the resurrection, Jesus builds another fire on a lakeshore and cooks them both breakfast. He doesn’t lecture Peter about the denial. He asks his disciple three times, “Do you love me?” and then charges him to “feed my sheep.”

A lakeshore, a fire, and a fresh start. I’ve watched a version of that scene play out at Northern Frontier more times than I can count. Camp is a place of second chances because it belongs to the God of second chances.

Some summers I wonder where I’d be without this place. I already know the answer:

“If I were not at Northern Frontier, I know just where I’d be. If I were not at Northern Frontier… back next summer, I would be.”

That’s the story of a boy who got a second chance, then a third, and then a spot on staff. Somewhere right now a boy is crossing off October days on his calendar, counting down to another summer at Northern Frontier. And somewhere else, a counselor is doing the same. Back next summer, every one of them, with someone already waiting to welcome him and to shake his hand.